Black Candles
by DahliaASant
Summary: What if Dante had failed to stop Arkham from unleashing hell upon Earth, destroying humanity and becoming a devil himself? What if Lady was taken prisoner in Temennigru, undergoing drastic lengths to seek vengeance? VxLxD love triangle
1. CANTO I

Hello everyone! 3 Yay for clicking this link! You get a cookie! Gives cookie :D

Anyways...this fanfiction is my dark & angsty take on what COULD have happened if Arkham had managed to become a devil during the conflict in Devil May Cry 3 and the heroes failed to stop him. This is rated for lots of violence and gore, swearing, torture; the typical elements of a Devil May Cry story, really At some parts it may get very morbid, so take that as a warning I suppose. But I enjoyed writing this first chapter and I'm going to greatly enjoy writing the next! All the characters are also portrayed in a darker light, as you will soon find out. Let's just say some people are complete and utter bastards in the beginning. There is also going to be a complex love triangle between Dante, Lady, and Vergil; I haven't fully thought out the course this story will take, so bear with me. I'm not even sure how long it's going to be...I guess it depends on if I get feedback/reviews, and whether it's positive or negative overall. I'm really experimenting with this, so please don't hate me ;;

Also, this isn't a very good opening chapter. I apologize for that. It feels really rushed and slightly abrupt; but I PROMISE it will get better soon. I just wanted to start it as it was brewing in my head the past few months and I've really wanted to put it down on paper/computer!  
I also began this because of writer's block with my other VergilxLady fanfic, "Demonic Divulgences." I think I'll be continuing that soon, though, because this really helped me think, which is good.

Anyways...enjoy! (And reviews would be GREATLY LOVED!)

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**Black Candles**

**One. **

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**

The sun trickled across the horizon like a smear of blood.

She watched its descent with bated breath through the frosted mirror, pale fingers etching daggers into its white surface. With her mind she stabbed the slate gray skin of the sky, deepened the scarlet wound, its rivulets of embers burning with pain upon the yawning celestial body. In a moment, the bloody sun heaved a final sigh of submission, before sinking wholly beneath the ground to be embraced by the awaiting earth. Her lips curved into a sickly crescent; a mirror to the defiant moon that conquered the deadened sky, its scythe stained with the evening's sanguine conquest.

It was beautiful; comforting, that the most powerful bodies could be devoured in a matter of minutes. Slowly, her fingers traced the ribs protruding from her thin flesh in odd angles; the scars like white threads illuminated by the moon's glow. It was the only source of light; yet that didn't matter any more. It was said that in life-threatening situations, humans were versatile, surviving in any way possible. It was more of a source of comfort that she imprinted that mantra into her mind-her only source of hope as a prisoner.

She had never truly realized the meaning of survival until then. Food had been a distant thought; repulsed at her own actions, she had hunted in her stone cell for creatures scuttling across the earth, desperate for nourishment, for anything to keep her from starvation, loss of sanity. Time was something she had taken for granted, before; it had been months, perhaps years in the drawl of the darkness, her own breath her company. At first she had spent her days of imprisonment with nothing but tears, and-although she had promised herself she would not show any sign of it to those bastard demons-raw, human fear.

The girl could recall being dragged by her hair across the tower of Temen-ni-gru, glass and stone cutting into her flesh, her clothing torn away by hungry demons' claws, their guttural laughter scorching her ears, their hissing haunting her deepest dreams. She remembered digging her nails into the stone, the hard earth beneath her to keep them from pulling her, from taking her to what she thought would surely be her death-with one sharp tug they had ripped her from the ground, her nails tearing from her flesh and embedding into the earth beneath her, hurled bodily into the dark abyss of her cellar.

With rattling breath, sharp currents of pain stabbed at her lungs-her eyes burned like flickering embers in the dark, in her soul, as she relived these memories, these broken nights of unheard cries. She remembered the times they would grow restless, the demons; the times they would break into her cellar, by the hundreds-they had multiplied since their victory, countless slobbering beasts, vermin, _infestation_-and they would torture her. The girl fingered the gashes on her thighs, the bloody split in her lip, her bruised eyes, her undoubtedly shattered limbs. Torture was, perhaps, a human term; an understatement for their shrill cries of delight as they tore into her flesh with their claws, bit into her collarbone, lashed at her back with flogging, shards of glass sticking through her skin like a fleshy pincushion.

Her whimpering. The _shame._ How she had whimpered beneath her breath; she had never cried out, never begged or pleaded for mercy, even with _his_ demon's eyes watching her in their ruby malice, their ecstasy in her torment, in the blood that splattered from her weak, brittle body. Never had she known what joy he could have experienced, watching his own flesh punctured, his own blood spilled.

And to think she could have ever called Arkham her father.

It was not the torture that ever pained her; it was not the imprisonment, not the horror of watching Arkham with his smug smile, his shriveled ebony flesh, the demonic wings protruding from his form, the blood-stained talons.

It was that she had failed, and in that she lost her humanity.

She had failed to avenge her mother; failed to avenge herself. She had failed the human race; she had failed Dante.

_Dante._

The last she could recall of him, he had been fighting. He always fought to the end, even if he knew he couldn't win. She remembered watching him as he brought up his blade against Arkham, a cocky grin on his flawless features. He was challenging him, on the threshold of hell-so close to knocking him down, to sheer victory, closer than she had ever been…but then something had happened; Dante had slipped, a demon had emerged from nowhere to strike at him. His face had fallen, there were too _many_, the hopes and dreams were shattered-and Arkham was laughing_, laughing_…

Dante had been pushed off of the tower, his bright eyes wide, a startled gasp in the depths of his throat. He had been too surprised to change into demon form, too surprised to do _anything _but fall-

She remembered screaming, trying to run to him, her heart so heavy, her mind refusing to process…she couldn't see him, the fog was too thick, he didn't answer her cries-but the last flicker in those cobalt eyes had been of sorrow.

_I'm sorry, _they said_, I couldn't_.

And she had been overpowered, fading in and out of darkness-the demons snarling, bloodthirsty above her, her moans of terror as they tried to ravage her, their claws glinting as they tore her flesh, the rivulets of her own warm blood-

And then she was here.

She had seen the bones pile through the cracks between the walls; the human skulls on hilltops against the slimy earth, their rotten flesh hanging from detached limbs like fish hooks. All she heard was the crunching of bones, the terrified screams of the children, the women, the warriors as they were devoured whole; raped, gutted of their insides. Futile, the struggle. They would all die eventually.

Yet she had never heard Dante's voice; his screams of agony, his pleading for mercy.

Perhaps he never said a word when he died.

Perhaps he smirked with defiance, moaned with mocking pleasure as they gouged into his flesh, tore through the gray matter within his skull, ate his intestines raw.

Perhaps he was still alive.

This was the hope which she had fed on; the hope which fueled her blood, brought nourishment to her withered flesh, strength to her battered limbs. She knew if she lingered here, powerless without struggle, she would die. At first she had lusted for the day in which she would be killed, knowing that every scream would be a scream closer to silence.

The girl knew exactly how it would occur, a reenactment of previous murders, bloody sacrifices; he would kill her with his bare hands, his blood-shot eyes like an addict's, savoring, needing every second of her pain stricken face, the way she would twitch as he lapped up the oozing blood from her pores like a rush of cocaine to his senses. He wouldn't have it any other way. The creator, reveling in the judgement of his sinful children. He would gut her, skin her alive, eat her intestines and make her watch every sickening swallow, reveling in her painful cries. He would rape her with his blade, finish her off with a stab straight through her pelvic region-just like her mother.

A fitting end for the disobedient girl.

The bad, bad child that dared to disobey her dear, _dear _daddy.

With a wave of revulsion, she spat against the ground, a remarkable effort with the dryness of her mouth. She would not give him the satisfaction of hearing her cry. She would not give him the glory of ravaging the remaining member of his family; she would _haunt _him, _hunt_ him, _hurt _him.

A promise was a promise, no matter where she was-no matter how close to death, how hopeless it seemed.

Even if Dante was dead.

Mary Arkham never broke a promise.

Multi-colored eyes stared down at the shackles on her wrists. They were metal, numb against her dead hands-they had lost their feeling ages ago, her nerves a lingering specter to her body. Slowly, her crooked mind began to creak upon its hinges; the cadaver brain mottled with twisted vengeance.

A smile curved itself upon her lips again-

And she screamed.

It was a shrill cry that ricocheted against the walls, reverberated within her stinging ears, her lungs exploding with the intensity; she fell upon the ground, thrashing madly, her body shirking from the dirt floor to propel into the air, limbs flailing madly in their metal restraints, eyes bulging from their sockets, foam lining the corners of her mouth. She bashed her head against the earth, her multi-colored orbs rolling, struggling to bite down upon her tongue, drawing sharp rivulets of blood that dribbled across her pale chin.

The heavy metal door burst open to answer her cries; a shower of cascading light penetrated the darkness, a soprano of hissing screams flooding the room to surround her. A demon resembling a centipede crawled through on its hundreds of spindly limbs, its slime-coated hide gleaming with the scarlet of what could only be the remnants of human blood. Foam dribbled down the orifice between two pincers on either side, long enough to skewer a man straight through his scalp to his struggling feet-thousands of leering red eyes taking in her thrashing form, the countless needle-like legs clacking sharply against the ground in hungry anticipation as it flung itself towards her with incredible speed.

Then the screeching insect descended upon her, its hundreds of hungry scarlet-orbed eyes flashing with the reflection of her ivory flesh, curved pincers snapping viciously, down down down to crush her writhing head-

In an instant, Mary shoved her shackled arms forward, straight into contact with the insect's foaming maw-the roaring orifice colliding with her metal cuffs, steely pincers closing in on the chain of her twin imprisoners, snapping then cleanly in half with one bite. Jerking her hands free, she pushed her legs with all her might against either side of the clammy, slithering centipede's body, oozing like a pustule, her trembling hands clamping with vain desperation against the frantically snapping pincers, the oozing liquid dribbling down her thin wrists. Her heart beat in her straining chest, lungs collapsing painfully against her rib cage as she wheezed and struggled for lost strength, exerting what remained of any power in each jerk of her limbs to repel the centipede's advances, keep it from sinking down to crush her body beneath its weight, fingers struggling to find solid bone amidst the mass of its slippery hide.

Yet she had forgotten its countless legs; Mary let out a cry of pain, jerking her head backwards as the sudden onslaught of spindly, sharpened appendages stabbed into her body on either side, tiny needles puncturing into her flesh from shoulder to foot. She could only cry out, her eyes widening, the leer of the beast's wide, innumerable eyes as it sank its puncturing limbs deep within her skin; a fluid sucking motion rippling across her shirking frame-it was sucking her blood, her insides; she was growing weaker, her hands could no longer clamp themselves around the jerking pincers, her body was lank and cold and her mind refused to process anything but pain and terror and numbness…

A thought broke through the dam of dying skin, her dissolving mind.

She couldn't die here. She couldn't-not after _everything_.

As the blood oozed and trickled from her body in thick pellets, the beast above sucking the life out of her, her eyes half-opened, her shuddering breaths-

Lady pushed against the pincers with all the strength left in her bursting veins; her eyes wild flames to her bitter, flickering heart. The pincers snapped cleanly in half-with an ear shattering scream, the beast flung its body backwards as Lady tore the long pincers straight through its temples, their ends protruding into the dead air- and then, the smell of its spurting blood gurgling from its wounds, its flailing legs as they pulled away from her bruised skin. Jerking upwards, the demon's bloodstained limbs flying frantically into the air as it fell, orifice frothing with thick, green blood down its torso, its gaze rolled to reflect Lady's smug, smiling face filled with such savage satisfaction it could not be fully captured even by its endless eyes. Yet with revulsion, she realized it had not been killed outright.

The huntress could only watch as, with an anguished cry, the demon's head fell from its own thick neck, and it bore down, flailing limbs resurrected to wild advancement at the bewildered girl. Lady had no time to react- her limbs were frozen, she was sapped of all her strength, her adrenaline a dull, dead thud inside of the vacant skin of her shuddering heart. All she could make out were the quick blurs of its legs in the thick darkness at it came towards her, its scream shattering her illusive second of triumph from its guttural insides; all she could do was shield her face from the attack so it would not entirely mutilate her corpse; she knew she would be killed outright-

Then, a stream of light pierced the darkness of her lids, the centipede's gurgling cry, a showering of wet liquid thick and cold on her pallid skin. She was still alive. Her knees knocked together within her boots; shaking legs regaining their feeling, a blanket of heat swathed about her small, frail figure as her brain relished in the sudden burst of life, the realization something had stopped this-_thing…_though whether it was friend or foe, she cared not. She was _alive._

With a quiet gasp, the girl opened her quivering eyes. Steel, stoic cobalt clashed with desperate, multi-colored orbs-and widened in fearful recognition. A blade flickered in the darkness, its lithe body shimmering with iridescent slabs of torn, slimy flesh, green blood marring its steel surface-skewering through the centipede's entire body like a six foot-kabob. It was dead with one simple stroke of the blade, a mere flick of the possessor's wrist.

Lady's mind spasmed into a state of grim delirium; suddenly, the room was spinning, her body was weightless in the shock; yet his prominent figure remained erect against it all, a sentinel, the beam of light from the opened cell casting a regal shadow at his heels. Power incarnate; the leer upon his alabaster face as he flicked his blade across the air, the demonic carcass that had nearly destroyed her slipping easily from its deathtrap to squelch upon the ground. And how he smiled at it, kicked its dead body as if it were a pebble, as if the sight excited him-and in this way, she remembered everything. Words whispered as if reciting an incantation, forbidden curses, shunned secrets-the name of a murderer, the name of a dead man.

"Vergil."

In response, the pale mouth only curled into a jagged sneer.

"_Pathetic._"

His hand dove forward.

She gasped-looked down, a glint of silver at her torso. The ground beneath her was red, her vision blurred into endless scarlet, her legs wet with the trailing spots like dull, thick rubies; a frozen sensation prickling at her kneeling figure, save for the fire at her torso, the fire consuming her heart-

Her stomach. Lady gazed down to find Yamato smiling its lustful grin, protruding straight through her crumpled back, passing through her abdomen entirely…it had been so swift-she had never felt it, even now could not register the gaping wound. Her voice rasped; too quiet, too weak to her ears,

"_Why?"_

Silvery gaze, cold and brooding, filled with frosty contempt,

"I merely wished to see if Mary Arkham was worth the waste of skin. If _this _was the girl who possessed the strength your father had feared for so long…and now I see what made you tick. Sheer _luck._"

An inhuman snarl sprank from the depths of his velvet throat as he stalked forward; and in his eyes she saw herself as he know perceived her.

Weak; powerless-useless and disgraceful.

"Where is that _fire, _that _resolve_ you pathetic human bitches were renowned for?"

He spat, his sapphire orbs suddenly jagged, piercing at her whimpering figure, the lifting of her trembling hands as she struggled to touch the cold blade penetrating her body,

"Is this what you call a fitting end, a prisoner of execution? You are _­filth-worse_ than all the other whores who died-because for a moment you almost seemed…_more._"

With a jerk, the blade twisted and rotated in a circle within her, so quickly her fingers had been unable to even touch her source of pain; she gasped, felt her insides scream, the imploding of blood, sweat frosting her throbbing body. It was too dark; the light at the edge of her vision began to dim, fading into slivers of iridescence, flitting dreams at the corners of her heavy lids-

_No._

She had been so close.

To freedom.

To vengeance.

To some sort of _hope._

It wasn't supposed to end like this.

It wouldn't end like this.

"There's no use trying to struggle,"

The blue-eyed monster hissed, pacing before her with his smug grin, the stray emotion casting the sallow guise of a corpse. Hadn't he died, so long ago? Yet he was here, stabbing her, _killing_ her, sadistic gaze reveling in her shudders, as her hands struggled to grasp at the blade embedded so deeply within her.

She couldn't accept it.

She _wouldn't_.

Vergil chuckled-and with a devilish grin, grappled the blade with his strong grip and shoved it so deeply the hilt hit the skin of her stomach; despite her cries of protest, her gurgling screams of grief as her fingers struggled to grab hold of the blade and fight back, to cast some sort of friction before he impaled her entirely; instead it slit her hands, her throbbing palms. Lady screamed, tears stinging her wide eyes, her head falling forward; the pain was overwhelming, the blood soaking her torso, her thighs, her arms. Again, the silver-haired devil spat upon the ground before her, kicked a boot at her stomach so that she fell backwards into the cold earth, the blade sinking vertically against the ground to hold her fading body, settling within her defeated figure. He turned his head, made to go for the door-

A shuffling of feet distracted him. In an instant, Vergil had whipped around to find the intruder-

Yet he could only watch as Lady, every limb upon her thin form trembling, every inch of skin coated in blood, Yamato sticking straight through her stomach like a pincushion, brought herself to her wobbling knees. Her breath heaved from the depths of her throat, blood trickling from her opened mouth, eyes multi-colored embers of once dying light. With a guttural moan, she pulled herself to her feet-he watched as her hands grasped the blade so tightly her palms bled, struggled to pull its length from her torso.

"I made a promise,"

She rasped, pulling an inch of the weapon from her stomach; her eyes wincing, mouth upturned in agony with every passing moment. Her body yearned, struggled to drag her down, die upon the floor-yet she screamed, fought against its urges, pulled savagely at the thick hilt, the blade tearing through her organs, her shattered bones, her screeching muscles. Every inch and every breath and every thought of hers was strained, crying out in vain, shattering and breaking into a nothingness beyond death, beyond reason, beyond sanity-her brain failed to respond as she burst into spasms of screams and shouts as the metal passed through, faster and faster and faster to rip away her heart, her collapsing lungs, her torn insides-burning and resonating into one goal of will and inhuman desire to live and fight and _destroy­-_

The demon only watched as she pulled, Yamato protruding halfway through her gut; her voided eyes, her whimpering mouth.

She would not die.

Her body would fail; but her soul would live.

"It will kill you, pulling it out, you foolish girl-it's _fruitless!_ You're going to die within minutes!"

"_No_," She hissed, her voice a whisper in the chasm of her rattling bones, eyes burning in the ashes of the darkness, "Go back to _hell_, Vergil. I'm going to kill Arkham-and then, I can burn with you!"

With a final scream, she tore the blade completely from her stomach-a gaping hole shone through, raw and sanguine. Yamato lay dormant and bloodied in her hands; pale-faced, her body heaving painfully with every breath, effervescent eyes glowing in the infernal abyss surrounding them. The blue demon hesitated; even then, his ultramarine gaze seemed to falter. Yet after a moment they flickered into cerulean slits, cruel amusement,

"You'll die in a matter of minutes if you don't do something, _fool. _You're only _human!_ You should have never even tried to survive in such a situation…what to do, what _to do?_"

But despite his chuckling mockery, despite her dying heart, despite the darkness that clung to her being like a second skin, slowly ebbing away to extinguish her flickering spirit-

She knew what she had to do. The cruel realization dawned upon her, caused her to groan in unfettered anguish-she had no other choice, playing into the trap of survival that years of pain and bloodlust had set for her. It was inevitable; it was the worst possible outcome-

It was fate.

And she did not care.

With raw determination, the girl dove for his tall figure-with one fluid motion Yamato sliced at his pale, exposed throat; his smug expression imprinted into the chasm of her mind forever. Lady brought her mouth to the thick, streaming rush of scarlet, and drank deeply-the euphoria, the rush of hot _life, _and she was exploding in delirium; she felt the demon blood pulse through her veins…

And in that moment, Mary's humanity was gone forever.


	2. CANTO II

Thanks for being patient with how long it's been taking me to update everything lately. I'm glad I found enough time this weekend to actually put Chapter 2 up; Chapter 3 will come much more quickly, I promise! Please read and review, I appreciate it more than you'd ever know.

**Black Candles**

**  
Two.  
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_The world is on fire. _

_She was blind, running with dead eyes throughout the world before her. Her bare feet dug into the clods of wet dirt that gathered at her soles, rainwater hitting her body in all directions. It matted her long mane of hair against her back, an ebony veil over her struggling eyes; to see, to sense, to make out some sort of logic in this strange, perverse attempt at vengeance. She did not know where she was going; all she knew was the throbbing of her heart against every bone in her body, the venomous adrenaline giving life to her limbs. Branches of trees struggled to entangle her limbs like prying hands, the cobwebs clinging in dirtied silk across her skin. The feeling of blood was cold and inevitable, stains of scarlet coalescing with the unblemished ivory of her flesh-the wounds spawned almost as quickly as the heavens rained about her; almost as deep, almost as never ending._

_Yet all she could see in the distance was the horizon, those embers and sparks kindled on its edges as every inch of the heavens burst into flame, as the tranquil blue of her life collapsed, eaten entirely by the hungry fires of hell itself. The skin of a woman far, far away-eaten away, as if it never existed; brittle bones to brittle ashes, powerless in her frailty to ever stop it. Screams penetrated the air, engulfed her-whether it was hers, she did not know. All she knew was the pounding of the world as it imploded all around her, the cries of horror from her mouth as she willed herself to run, run, run-_

_She was dying, and powerless to stop it._

_Suddenly she was in pigtails, her fingers kneading taut dough, thin arms ivory with baking powder, a smile adorning her young face. An older woman with multi-colored eyes gazed down upon her and, laughing, brushed powder from her wrinkled nose. A kiss upon her forehead. She was caught in the tightness of her embrace, the warmth, the meaning-_

_Ashes to ashes, dust to dust._

_A pale figure kneeling within a circle of candles, swathed in darkness. Black candles surrounded the bloodied body beneath his still frame, a body she feared-refused to recognize. She stepped forward, her limbs refusing to run away, away from her home, away from her father's strange ritual-and yet she reached a hand out, murmured his name in hesitation-_

_The black candles dripped scarlet wax against their dark, gleaming bodies._

_She realized it was made from blood._

_His head snapped up to face her, and he burst into laughter._

_The decaying body at his feet opened its eyes-and her mother's smile became the leer of a skeleton, the skin dripping from the bone like molten liquid, the tendons snapping away to reveal the hideously misshapen grin beneath._

_Mary screamed-_

_And found in those bottomless eyes her own dead face leering back._

_Ashes to ashes, dust to dust._

Lady pulled herself from the cold veil of darkness, feeling as if she had just been pulled bodily from a cold, black sea. Gasping for air, her breath came in ragged wheezes, her temples pounding painfully against the jarred inertia of her brain. Her mind refused to think; her eyes refused to see, save for the bursts of mental light against the insides of her lids-and, realizing they were shut, she pried them open with a moan of pain. Before her was a blur of color that coalesced in the foggy aftermath of dreams; she regained the feeling in her cold, numbed hands and brought slim fingers to her face, her lips.

With a shudder, Lady tasted bitter iron upon her tongue, and wondered if she had bit herself, or had previously bled. She didn't remember anything save for being locked away like a bird in her square cage, scavenging for food-

And then her fingers found a wet spot of blood upon her chin, and suddenly things began to snap back into place. As if seeking confirmation of her thoughts, Lady's trembling hands found her abdomen, and she immediately shot back in pain.

"Not the brightest of ideas, I'd think."

At the voice, her eyes narrowed (she found even _this_ painful), and she blinked to struggle and seek out the smirking figure before her. The frosted silver of his hair glinted against the blackness all around them-he was a jagged diamond, raw in his beauty, able to cut and draw blood when brought too close to the admiring eye. She would have found him beautiful if his gaze was not always so…harsh, so soulless. The cold bit at her with his voided stare, and for a moment Lady was reminded of her mortality.

"What do you _care?_" She snapped, struggling to hoist herself to her feet.

Lady pulled herself to her knees, and nearly screamed in pain at the feeling; every inch of her thighs burned at the effort, as if she had just risen from a state of year-long numbness. She dreaded Vergil's triumphant sneer from the corner of her wincing eyes. Dawning horror filled her body.

"What did you do?" Lady whispered, her voice sounding awkward and alien in her ears-even that was strained, as if her lungs were being pierced by a needle at every painful stab of each syllable.

Blue eyes considered her for a moment, as if to gauge her reaction to his words. They came at a slow, contemplative slur at first, then faded into cool amusement,

"I did nothing. You simply took the foolish choice of becoming…one of my own."

Her mind went blank, and despite herself, visions played before her eyes; the ripping of his delicate throat with her savage grip (his white scar gleamed from the alabaster smoothness of his skin, as if to taunt her), the warm, bubbling blood sliding down her throat, her ecstasy…

Lady touched her lips, and realized they were warm, burning at the thought. She felt her face flush, her blood come to life in sync with her bastard mind; shameful, sinful. At once she felt both dirty, contaminated, and something…indescribable.

The blue demon chuckled, his gaze appraising her, his voice softening,

"You enjoyed it. My taste…you were on me for _hours,_"

It was a gentle hiss; the cajoling of a serpent to its admiring mouse; he practically slithered towards her, sending shudders down her back at his presence. Lady's mind squirmed viciously within her throbbing head, going into spasms of panic, yet her body purred at his proximity; the canines of her teeth seemed to prick with longing at the sight of him, the hunger swelling in her stomach, and-somewhere deeper-her groin, her soul…

_No._

It was worse than death, this state, worse than anything that could have happened to her in her confinement. Tears burned at the insides of her eyes, dilating her pupils into gleaming bronze and blue puddles of dread.

"No," She gasped, and willed her body to step away, away from the noxious perfume of his skin, the serpent's tempting hiss to pluck the fruit of his flesh again; her body quivered at the effort, unwilling to fully obey her. It was as if she hadn't learned to move her limbs before, her brain in a battle to control her body. She pulled herself away awkwardly, until she realized she was still on her knees, and sank on her bottom upon the floor, pushing away from him with her throbbing palms digging into the ground.

It was useless; he advanced toward her with strong, swaggering steps, his eyes like sapphires against the haze of darkness all around them-Lady felt herself drawn to them like a hungry peasant to riches, to carnal nourishment, the lust bubbling in her blood like a foreign drug within her veins. Hanging her head to keep herself away from his gaze, frustration welled up within her-she bit her lip and shuddered at the sudden burst of frigid air from his sharp movements, cold and terrifyingly wanton. In an instant, the smug devil brought his fingers towards her face, as if to touch her.

Lady snarled and pushed herself away just as his hand went to cup her cheek-every inch of her wanted to rip his long fingers clean from their joints, savor the sight of his blood, the sound of his screams. Vergil sneered above her, coming so close to her dormant form he seemed a towering, pale monument of frost.

Lady bit her lip until pain pierced at her throbbing nerves. _He_ was the reason this was happening. He _knew_ that she would have ended up this way, and she had taken the bait; she had damned herself, taken Satan by the hand through the shadows of mortal sin.

"Consider it evolution," He hissed coolly above her, arching a brow in dark resplendence, "You're not the first, you know. You're not the first to taste of the blood of demons…many humans have done so in the year of Arkham's rule, yet I'm afraid it was too strong for them. They died like the worthless scum they are, their bodies rejecting the superior blood that kept them alive."

She felt her pulse quicken, her skin prickling with electric shock,

"I…I am…"

Lady brought her hands to her multi-colored gaze; hands once gloved, now bare and deathly white, deceptively immaculate. Lillith's hands. Sinner's hands. Even then, she could see the blood pulsing scarlet and tainted beneath her skin; even then, she could feel the thick toxins slithering through her like serpents, Vergil's blood pumping throughout, keeping her _alive._

She was becoming one of _them._

"You are alive," The hard voice glistened against her numbed senses, strong and sharp with dark knowledge, "Alive and fueled with the thirst for power…the thirst for vengeance."

He came so close to her, lowering his silvery head, that she could feel his warm breath contrasting with the frigidity of his presence. Her body throbbed in cruel harmony with his own; a sickening, bloody chemistry that her heart jerked painfully in her throat.

"Kill Arkham,"

Vergil's voice hissed softly against her, sending waves of pleasure throughout her body-waves that both sickened and excited her. She was aware, then, that the demon's lips were brushing against her ear as he spoke, and for a moment she could only see the abyss of black within his shining eyes; the darkness beneath the sudden burst of pleasure. He was a serpent coaxing her with bitter fruit; so much power she could feel it budding within her veins, ready to bloom and thrive and choke her enemies. All she had to do was taste the venom; allow him to enclose her in his coils-

And as her canines throbbed with lust at the sight of his opalescent skin, she realized she was in too far to ever turn back.

"I thought he brought you back. I thought you are here because of him."

Lady's voice was shaking. It flew from her lips in jagged tones of reluctance, hesitation; he would devour her when he could, she couldn't trust him, he was a _demon_, he was against Dante-

But his lips formed into an indulgent grin at her side, and she knew.

"You used him."

He chuckled, his head swaying against her, making her dizzy with its grace. She was lost in the thrall, in the sudden onslaught of bloodlust, and he knew she had no choice but to cling to every word he said, his slippery manipulation oozing with every syllable,

"Yes. And I waited for a way to destroy him; just as you have. What better tool to use than his own daughter, bent on vengeance? Of course, I had to test you, and you have endured…for now."

The huntress could feel the mirth pulsating through his words, his harsh gaze. Disgust coursed through Lady's brain, and she resisted the urge to spit at him,

"So I'm just another pawn," The girl retorted sharply, "And you'll kill me, too."

Vergil pulled away from her, and Lady's body was enveloped in the cold grip of darkness,

"No. None have rejected the demon blood and survived. You'll either die after prolonged flowing of my blood within your veins…or undergo complete metamorphosis, and lose your humanity in the process."

A slight smile touched his lips, and in that moment, Lady knew how he could kill without remorse. She tasted his cruelty on a platter of innocent flesh,

"Either way, you will disappear, as was meant by the gods."

He walked across the tiny room, pacing within its center, and Lady realized they were no longer in her cellar. They were in a slightly larger room, dark yet furnished with the shapes of a bed, a table, objects she knew she could have never seen with her normal vision. The word "normal" caused her to shudder in revulsion. How she wanted at that moment to kill the self-righteous, chuckling demon before her. How she wanted to hear him scream.

"Evolution, Mary. Survival of the fittest. We demons are, in all aspects of the term, _superior_ to your kind. Witness the genocide that is taking place in the world around us! Countless humans destroyed across the continent-and demons continue to thrive, to grow, some feeding on human hosts, raping, murdering, just as your kind so love to dominate, to destroy. And you are just a number, just another bitch thriving on vengeance, on simple human lust. _Is that not true?_"

His eyes glittered with malice as he spoke. Lady felt a carnal hatred biting at her heart.

This was a monster; a demon just like the one before her, with his devilish, remorseless grin. This was a Lady among thousands; another bitch that would kill and be killed with no other purpose but to shed blood.

"Bastard," She cried, her body beginning to tremble.

"We will escape from Temen-ni-gru," The blue demon continued, as if she had not spoken, "And you will find Dante, somewhere within the city. I am confident he is still alive."

At the name, her ears pricked up, and shallow hope filled her empty heart,

"And then we destroy Arkham?"

"Yes," The demon retorted coolly, "And I will take his power for my own…"

For a moment, the demon seemed to pause in thought. He craned his neck towards her, examining her hanging head,

"And whether you live, or die…_well._ The outcome of that isn't exactly in the top of my agenda. Who cares for the welfare of parasites?"

As his words echoed painfully across the room, a wicked grin marred his otherwise stoic features.

"Bastard. Get away from me," The huntress suddenly sobbed, pulling her head away, and her resolve shattered into pieces.

All she heard was Vergil's quiet chuckle as he moved away from her-yet she could not tell if he had left her as she wished.

The tears pricked at the depths of her soul, begged to flow free from her multi-colored irises; yet she would not let them. She would not give this monster the satisfaction; instead she bit her lip so hard her canines drew blood. The taste was iron and brought a sudden burst of euphoria to her senses; so pleasurable that she was even further disgusted, horror filling her mind to the brim.

This was not Mary Arkham.

Mary despised herself. How she ached to tear at her skin, spill the tainted blood within. Yet she would not. She _could_ not.

Because of her goddamned sense of nobility-her need for revenge no matter the costs. She knew if it came to this, she would adapt-and Vergil had always known.

Entrapment.

He had trapped her; and yet, it had been by her own impulse his plan had worked so beautifully. _He_ had not jumped for her with his bare, bleeding throat; she had torn the skin, she alone had feasted upon his essence like a cheap whore of a Dracula.

In an instant her body sporadically, mechanically, obliged to the pleading of her mind; her trembling fingers clutched the handle of a discarded hand mirror placed all too conveniently nearby. She wondered if this was another implement of torture Vergil had set up for her, wondered if he would relish the undoubted horror of viewing her appearance.

_Monster,_ her insides hissed. _You are becoming a monster._

She did not need to look into the hand mirror to confirm it. Her cheeks were hollow, sunken as a corpse's; her skin almost translucent, her eyes dark-rimmed, burning bright against her otherwise dead features-her unruly mass of long, ebony hair, the scars upon her throat, the outside of her blood-caked lips, her once immaculate chin…

_Monster, the very same monster that killed your own mother, gutted her whole, fed upon her insides right before you! And oh how she screamed how she begged pleaded cried for mercy and how he laughed at her how he mocked her how he destroyed her-_

"NO!" With a sob of defeat, she threw the mirror into the ground, shattering it forcefully into hundreds of pieces.

Her speech reduced to hysterical screams, Lady grabbed at her hair, pulled at her scalp, buried her head within her shaking arms, the darkness enclosing all around her, suffocating her in dread. In an act of desperation, the frail girl shoved her fingers down her throat and vomited blood in showers of thick scarlet, desperate to hurt herself, desperate to torture the devil within. Bile seared her throat with fire at every shudder of her body as she released each wave of poison from her insides; horrible, flaming hellfire.

She felt she deserved every second of it.


	3. CANTO III

Yes, I'm still alive. This story will not end-and neither will Demonic Divulgences! I'll finish writing them both even if it takes me my entire life (which it won't, hopefully…); I've just been sidetracked with school and life and everything else. For some reason I'm not too fond of this chapter…but it's moderately long, and I'm beginning to get the plot moving, so look forward to better ones soon! (And by soon…I don't mean months later. Seriously now.

Enjoy, loves, and thank you for being patient with me.

* * *

**Black Candles**

**Three.**

Love planet was brimming with life.

Bodies swung in throngs of testosterone in perfect rhythm to the guttural beats of carnal drums; a low, throbbing music that vibrated from pulsating speakers; vibrated in rhythm with his groin, sent shivers of pleasure from the deepest depths of his demonic blood. Pulsating lights spasmed in multi-colored shafts, illuminating the shadows of close-knit bodies swaying to primal music in exploding bursts of color; hips arching, legs entwining, bodies writhing.

He was amidst it all; stroking the hair of a giggling blonde at his side, his hand gripping her thigh with such possessive tightness his knuckles were as white as gritting teeth. Deep blue eyes scanned her small frame with hunger, a growl rumbling within the depths of his thick throat. She flashed him a drunken smile; and in an instant he was against her, his hands running hungrily, possessively over the bare skin beneath her dress, his tongue entwining passionately with her own-

And then he was inside of her, and as she arched her throat back and screamed in pleasure, Dante twisted her head back forcefully, grabbing at her frail blonde hair, and penetrated her body with the shaft of his blade. Instantly, the undulating waves of blue in her pleasured eyes foamed over with terror; she arched her head back, struggling to scream, and as he thrust the metal deeper and faster within her gut, choked on the red hot liquid that bubbled and oozed and blackened down her throat, her hands frantically clutching onto his own, nails twisting and tearing into his paper-thin flesh with the twitching of her own body, her jerking limbs suspended like a marionette's snapping strings.

"How do you like _that_, you whore?"

Dante hissed, his eyes burning embers, the flames within flickering at the sight of her gagging, the smell of her blood filling the stale air, the sounds of squelching as he pierced her pulsing, raw, inhuman heart, the beat throbbing in his ears, greater than any music, the whimpering, whispering, pleading-

"Please, stop, please…!"

And then, a gasp, a sigh; a moan escaped Dante's lips as the fallen demoness slumped in a crumpled heap upon the ground, blood staining the velvet walls, her emaciated torso sliding smoothly from Rebellion, the sound of her dead heart still stirring pleasantly in his own head.

This was his cocaine, his euphoria. This was his refuge, his newfound sanity; his survival.

He walked along a balcony suspended high above the gyrating bodies below, bodies that were as real as him as the ragged, lifeless girl slumped against the dead ground. Sweat plastered to the devil's alabaster skin, a sharp contrast to the scarlet of his overcoat; yet as he raised a muscled, sinewy arm, body exploding in bursts of color beneath the endless lights, another type of liquid became visible, thick and tangible as it oozed down between the ridges of his fingertips, past his trembling palms, flowing in rivulets down his blue-veined arms. It was the girl's blood, the fiery liquid sticking to his skin like the blood of so many others before. Dante never wiped his body clean of the dregs of his last kill. What was the need? They were all the same, in the end. One, united flesh; unholy, damned, deserted. They were scum, the filth through their veins, and he ached to cleanse it, stop it all-

In these times, you took what you could, filled your hungry soul with carnal pleasure. There was never any difference between them; pain, pleasure. As long as it distracted, as long as it satisfied…what was the need?

The Son of Sparda swaggered about the balcony levered above the intermingling demons and human prey of Love Planet; his eyes alight with new life. He took a deep breath of the thick, odorous air, the smell of his recent kill clouding his nostrils like sickly perfume.

"That's the tenth one this night. How Arkham's cunts have multiplied,"

This was his personal hunting ground; his sense of fantasy and sanity outside of the city, where human carcasses piled up like hilltops and he could not stop it. He knew destroying these demons would do nothing; to hurt the weeds, after all, you had to cut the root, burn the ground on which they bred. But that was no longer an option; not for him, when he was alone here, doing nothing but satiating himself; keeping himself alive.

_Coward._

He slumped against the railing, his reflection blurred in the fogged windows nearby. Frost covered the features of his face that were not already concealed by unkempt veils of marble hair; the thick white blurring the once clear blue of his eyes. He smirked at the bitterness of it all.

Dante was a blind man.

He preferred it.

Gazing into the blurred threads of translucent skin and hair that formed his wraith-like, sunken features, he found it difficult to discern whether or not it was _really_ him. His face was no longer strong, no longer definitive; instead he was an aftermath of construed shapes, iridescent dreams and glassy hopes that broke with the murmuring shards until he was trapped in the smoke, the bleary past that shifted and shattered all around him.

The dead face stared back through its frosted eyes. He wondered what those eyes would be like, beyond the glaze; just how much of the demon had taken over, distorted him, damaged him.

He didn't know that he would find out tonight.

For within the glass, as sudden as a fleeting thought, ebony tendrils of color entwined with his own ivory features. At first it seemed like nightfall had spread its thin fingers across the gray-slated sky; yet it was then that Dante realized the black was not some smoky illusion, rather something real and tangible; something solid beyond his own transparency.

_A ghost?__Or…_

Frigid white fingers clutched the twin pistols at his sides, his bated breath and furrowed brow the only betrayal to his otherwise stagnant figure. Slowly, he turned his head, the motion somehow disconnected to his numbed senses; it had been a long time before his nerves had been on edge, before he had been in such a position again. It had been a long time since he was able to use his human intellect; his human reasoning. In that instant, when he turned around so sharply at the sight of a single saffron eye gazing at him through his reflection, he realized he could finally awaken.

It was her.

"Dante."

The word suspended in the air like a recurring dream; he remembered the haunted nights of hearing that childish voice, the pleading cries, the look of horror in those frail eyes…

And here she was.

But she was too pale, transparent; paler than himself. She was a wisp of air that he was afraid to touch, lest she disappear between his opened fingers, like so many times before. Only a phantasm, figment of his fickle, fucked up mind.

"No," he whispered, his lip curling as he turned his gaze away to the dust-caked floor, the spasms of light that still flickered across his unsteady vision.

A pause that lasted longer than eternity. Her steady breath became his music as she reached out for him, the feeling of her fingertips on his cheek-so warm and soft and _real_, his euphoria.

"Why?" She murmured, and the devil could only smile to the empty air beneath him.

"Because it's never real, and I know better by now. Because I wake up each night to that same vision, that same face, hoping to find you, to tell you I'm sorry. But you _always_ disappear."

His fists clenched, then, his voice a sudden, rough hiss to scathe the smoothness of their encounter,

"You _always_ fucking leave me! And I'm left hating myself, hating this world and the hellhole it's become."

Dante turned his head towards her own then, his smile never faltering, though it was bitter; spewing with toxic, oozing spite. Her fingers were warm against his neglected skin, so fleetingly warm and solid. He wondered at his sanity.

"It's me this time," She was whispering; her voice dulled his senses like a drug, strong and fluid and intoxicating. He wanted to escape in her voice.

"I promise I'm the real thing."

"Show me," He said, his thawing eyes boring into her-wanting, needing.

How could anyone know how much he had changed?

In an instant, Lady ran the tips of her fingers along his cold lips. He closed his eyes to the world and became one with her touch, and for a moment, things were better. Dante's lips pressed against the skin of her digits in a chaste kiss, yet Lady did not pull her hand away.

"Lady," The devil said softly, opening his eyes to capture her own; oceans of sapphire and jasper brimming with life; a life outside of this damned place, a life that boasted purity, clarity.

He hadn't felt so alive since the last time he had seen her, fought alongside her, suffered defeat with her; and then he had fallen, damned, destroyed, from the Tower…

And there was death. Blood on his hands.

He thought she had been one, another smear along his fingertips, another body torn to shreds right before his eyes that he couldn't save. He thought she had been one of those bones, piled high within the burning air; raw, rotting flesh and maggot-eaten remains a testament to his own mistake, his own few seconds of foolishness, of failing to kill Arkham.

And here she was.

"I thought you were dead."

Lady's lips merely pursed into a proud grin,

"I don't die _that_ easily, Dante. But if it's any consolation, I thought the same of you."

"How did you escape?"

Dante's voice flew from his lips in a lazy murmur; everything was so pleasantly numb, dream-like, though all at once his insides crackled with fervor, his blood leapt at the feeling of the raven-haired huntress' fingertips idly caressing his lips, his chin, his cheek. Warmth ebbed at the iced edges of his flesh, thawed his once-frozen thoughts into a pleasant clarity. Before him, the club suddenly grew disgusting; he saw the trails of vomit mingling with scarlet stains of blood upon the ground, trailing across the walls; the dilapidated bodies strewn along the floor like rag dolls; decapitated, impaled through silver dancing poles like kabobs of hanging, festering flesh, their insides gutted, knotted; slithering intestines, oozing bile, the bloody smatterings like a butcher's display. It was enough to make him vomit, the way the people continued to dance, oblivious to the remnants in which they stepped, the bodies they desecrated.

And Lady stood amongst it all, her bright eyes illuminated against the darkness of the club. Nothing touched her, nothing ever would.

Yet as he neared her, awaiting her response, curiosity ebbing at his sharpened senses, he saw in those eyes a sudden reluctance.

"Who was it?"

His hands grasped her shoulders with unerring strength, fingers tearing into the fabric of her blouse; his breath taut within his throat, he struggled to read her multi-colored eyes, find meaning in the sudden vertigo that possessed his limbs, made the world spin, and suddenly he _knew,_ he knew the words that would slur from her trembling lips, the words she seemed so fearful of saying, as if it were poisonous, sacrilegious…

"Your brother."

Dante jerked away as if she had tried to stab him in the gut, his eyes wide, his hands never leaving her shoulders. For a moment, his tongue felt lax in his mouth-yet he bit down on the bile that threatened to rise from his throat, kept his bubbling emotions at bay from exploding within.

"_What_?" He could only murmur, his voice barely above a whisper.

The raven-haired girl watched him for a moment, the expression upon her soft features unreadable. Her upper lip curled against her face, marring the innocence he had admired only moments before,

"Dante, Vergil…he's…alive. He came back by my father's hand, and found me in the Tower, where I was locked away, and he…he…"

She bit her lip so ferociously, then, he could practically smell the iron of the blood that dribbled down her chin,

"He _saved_ me. And now he wants us-all of us-to work together, to destroy Arkham, once and for all."

"Destroy…" The words faltered on his lips, yet tasted deliciously sweet upon his tongue; a word he had ached to say for so long, filling his mind with reverence, anticipation.

But Vergil…

_No._

Dante could think on such matters later. Emotions were only secondhand, now, in favor of his vengeance. The Son of Sparda steeled his nerves and became as frigid as the blade suddenly unsheathed from his side, Rebellion glinting in the vibrant lights of the club, igniting his smirking reflection along its silvery sides as if he were supernatural, indestructible…

A devil yet again.

"Let's destroy him, then."

Lady watched as his blade danced in the darkness, twirling and slicing through the air with vigorous, hungry cutting motions, as if it were a demon's hide, the tainted flesh he so longed to destroy, devour-

He pulled the blade to his side, and, with another smirk, allowed the adrenaline of the kill to fill his veins, freeze the emotions within, and began to walk towards the exit of Love Planet with large, swaggering steps. As Lady stood and watched him kick the heavy, metal doors opened with a thick boot, the frost of the outside surged through to chill her bones and leave her with a sense of foreboding.

Dante's eyes had imprinted themselves into her mind; vibrant eyes, youthful and determined, dark and resplendent, wanting nothing more but bloodlust.

She wondered if she had been that way before.

She wondered if she could ever be that way again.

Lady didn't know how long she had been standing near the exit's opened orifice, how long the sudden sight of the yawning, jagged sky beyond had silenced her thoughts, her actions. It was as if she had been hypnotized by the sight, as if she were a child that had never seen the outside before-and in a sense, it was true.

She was newborn, now; her blood tainted, filled with black, putrid venom, incurable and irrevocable. And now the world was different, twisted; the deep blue of the sky seemed to be only the pulsing veins of the blackened beast within, the darkness that devoured everything eventually, made the world cold, made minds melt and dissolve into the abyss of pain, suffering, insanity.

She didn't want to see the corpses of so many people she had once known; she didn't want to face the smoldering flesh of the human victims she would undoubtedly see, struggle to save in vain. Lady didn't want to face what had once been her own mortality; a ghost, a rancid pustule of a dream.

And would Dante smell it on her, the tainted blood, the curse?

_Monster._

_Sinful wench. _

"You play your role quite well, woman."

Vergil's face cast a pallid gloom within the shadows of the club.

For some strange reason, it took Lady's breath away. A crooked grin cast itself upon his deceptively flawless features, his silvery locks and alabaster flesh glowing with an almost supernatural effervescence. He walked towards her in slow, languorous steps, the staccatos of his stride imprinting a haunting symphony in her mind, in the deepest loathing of her soul.

He was unbelievably beautiful-there was no doubt to that. Near him, his twin appeared ragged, blemished somehow-as if the sculptor of the statuesque brothers had made some error with Dante's features, had chiseled away his immortality. Yet he was immaculate. He was perfection incarnate-

He was a bastard.

Lucifer in the flesh.

How she wished she could hurt him, yet she couldn't; she knew she was not strong enough, and _besides _that, there was the blood bubbling within her veins at this very moment, the yearning of her heart to break free of its beating chamber within her body, tear through her mortal flesh and reach for him; become one with him. She thought that if that moment came she would rather rip her heart out and devour it again, whole, than ever give into her terrible lust. She was Eve whose bite from his apple was never satiated, until she would turn her naked gaze from humankind completely to her own damnation; her own undoing.

And she knew he saw the irony in this; in his smile, in his disgusting swagger.

"I see you have found my brother," Vergil's voice filled the air in a pure gait of mirth; it danced freely across her ears, so much more compelling than any of the erotic music in the background, carrying seductive beats of its own; promises of pleasure.

Lady could do nothing but nod, force herself to turn away from him. She couldn't look him in the eyes without losing herself, to the thrall of his features and the blood pumping within her, to her own chaotic frustration at her helplessness. Distractedly, she traced her fingertips along the balcony railing, slightly repulsed at the thick coat of dust that covered them.

A rush of cold air behind her caused her veins to burst, her mind to cry out in surprise; the huntress realized it was Vergil's breath against the back of her throat, exotic and enticing and horrible. She shuddered at the feeling, felt his long fingertip trace across her own, until his hand nearly covered hers upon the railing. Lady balled her free fist, squeezed until she could feel her nails digging into her skin. _Let the blood flow. Let me feel pain. Let the blood flow and distract me from this lust, this fucking, terrible lust…_

"You're hungry, aren't you?"

It wasn't a question. His words were laced with mockery, the sickeningly sweet, saccharine tones of his words like a mother taunting her naughty child. _Naughty girl,_ she could almost hear him say, _you spoiled little girl, never satisfied…_

At the feeling of his mouth against her ear, so close that she could feel the smooth skin brush across her lobe, Lady flinched. Droplets of blood coalesced upon her fingertips, staining her wrist in scarlet patterns. The smell was strong, intoxicating; it brought a burst of life to her limbs, caused her stomach to undulate beneath the flesh. She felt Vergil shudder almost simultaneously with her; he was pressed against her, his lips turning up into a smile that caressed the side of her face. She refused to whimper, to tremble-all she did was sink her nails deeper into her skin, her knuckles white and raw with the pressure, her nerves busily throbbing against her wound.

A chuckle.

"You know if you don't drink soon, you'll die. Especially with the way you're _hurting_ yourself, now. Oh, dearest Mary, don't you see? Listen to your master when he tells you what to do. You don't want to die, yet. That's not part of the agenda."

Her teeth grit within her mouth, Lady became revolted at Vergil's taunting, his purring of her name as if it were an endearment, as if he had the _right_ to use it so mockingly. _Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow…_

"What _is _in the agenda, then?"

The blue-clad devil stiffened at her side, ran a finger along one of her trembling hands, caught the stray, red droplets, brought them to his tongue and swallowed. She could almost feel his lips twisting into a shuddering grin, as if her taste had aroused him-and a tremor of revulsion exploded within her insides as she realized it probably had, in the most carnal way possible.

"We are to meet my brother on the outside, of course," Vergil retorted, suddenly preoccupied with whispering softly in Lady's ear; her eyes closed quickly to avert their twitching, her stomach whimpering like a puppy for more of his sickening blood. Poisoned bones, she would choke on the festering food, dying like an animal, nothing else.

The thought of her lying upon the ground, Vergil's blood splattered upon her mouth, his bark of laughter as he gazed down upon her rotting carcass…it was enough to curve her bloodlust, for now.

"How long are you planning to keep avoiding the inevitable, Mary? You can't hold out if you want to live."

Vergil's voice was filled with pleasure; it was all a game to him, and she was the unwilling player, the puppet whose insides he so loved to fondle, manipulate into painful submission. She wondered if she could suck the blood dry from his body, reduce him to a sack of pitiful skin, kill him off before he could kill her.

"I won't do it, Vergil. You know I'd rather starve and die than touch you ever again."

She faced him, then, her eyes sharp and jagged and piercing. At first, the demon seemed taken aback by her sudden hostility; yet he recovered quickly, shaking his head and chuckling,

"Your resolve is quite admirable, even for being a mere human. But that won't keep you from dying like all the rest. You'll be begging for it soon, believe me, woman."

With an admonishing sneer, he turned on his heels and slithered slowly towards the outside of the club, leaving a trail of frost behind him. Her body suddenly limp with exhaustion and painful spasms of hunger, Lady followed reluctantly, wondering just how long she could go on without suffering starvation, how long she could continue being as _human_ as possible.

And it was then, when she had nothing but death to look forward to, that Lady realized she was only leaving the darkness of the club to be greeted with the darkness of the world before her.


	4. CANTO IV

Thanks for being patient with me again! And here is superrrr long Chapter 4 (well, compared to the other Chapters, it is MUCH, MUCH LONGER.) It has A LOT going on because I couldn't stop my thinking enough to divide it into smaller chapters…but I'm glad that I'm finally getting things moving and will maybe get a coherent plot in the works. I think I'm just having a lot of fun with the character interactions between Lady and the twins. I've already started Chapter 5, so you can expect that MUCH sooner…and others, because I have one more week before Summer! So hopefully a Chapter a week (but I can't promise that.) And I'll continue Demonic Divulgences because I'm horribly late on that as well…

Enjoy, again :)

* * *

**Black Candles**

**Four.**

**"There is no greater pain than to remember, in our present grief, past happiness."**  
- _The Divine Comedy_**  
(Inferno, canto V, l. 121-23)**

_She opened her eyes and saw darkness._

_Blind, coagulating black swept across the room like smoke, slithering through the slanted windowpanes, spreading its thin fingers within the cracks of the shrouded white walls, beneath the creaks and springs of her bed. She shivered and clung to her pillow, buried herself within the white sheets, her eyes wide, breathing ragged. Mary had never been afraid of the dark before; she could always stand hours awake in the pitch blackness, could always sleep comfortably in the crux of nightfall. But this darkness was different. Cold. Ghastly. _

_She willed herself to gaze upward, through the thin blankets that covered her completely from whatever lay outside. She could feel the blackness oozing above her in thick shadows; slowly it slid across the bottom of her blanket, flowed upwards to drown her, suffocate her; and she knew that if she screamed, she would only choke on the cold, thick venom, quietly die away. She wondered where her mother was, if she could hear her scream. _

_And then, the blanket flew upwards; bursts of freezing, icy air shot into her veins, and she was plunging, screaming and thrashing, into the pitch blackness all around her, the blackness that was too cold, too penetrating--_

"_Calm down, Mary. It's all right." _

_She froze, forced her thrashing to cease, her luminous eyes gazing up at the sudden solid figure at her bedside. The smiling frame seemed too tall, too lank and withered; to Mary, he looked sick, with his protruding cheekbones and sunken yellow flesh that appeared wan and wax-like even in the darkness, the thin skin of his face stretched too tightly over the bones, caving inward to the two, glowing eyes. His clothing was different than she had seen only hours ago; thick, ebony robes that swirled about his slight frame, hung from his bony shoulders. Was this the same man she had known all her life?_

"_Father?" _

_The girl could only whisper from the bed, struggling to find where he had thrown her blankets, the cold nearly unbearable. She should have felt warmth, should have felt comfort and solace… _

_But there was nothing. Nothing but the bitter cold, the empty smile above her. He was still smiling, his thin lips curled from one bony cheek to the other; a skeleton's leering grin. Mary instantly grabbed at her knees and curled herself up into a tiny ball, her eyes scanning his own for some sign he would respond, wondering why they seemed so bright and strange against his always waxen flesh. _

"_Mary." _

_An ashen hand emerged from the swirling black of his sleeve, embedding itself within her long, dark locks-her head felt as if it were completely frozen, and she shuddered at the sudden absence of thought, forgetting to panic, forgetting to scream. It was as if all she could do was stare in docile defeat at the thrall of his strange, ruby eyes, the eyes that could not be her father's. _

"_You're not sleeping. Are you scared, Mary?"_

_Almost mechanically and without hesitation, she nodded. _

_His smile grew even wider, so wide she could see the tips of his blackened gums, his yellowing teeth._

"_What are you afraid of?" _

_Her voice was a whisper._

"_The dark…it's too dark, daddy." _

_The endearment sounded too strange and misshapen in the cold air. In the daytime, when light drowned out any fears or insecurities, 'daddy' was a word to use as endearment. Now, it was filled with desperation. _

"_In a few hours, it will be light again. You know that, Mary," _

_His smile became somber, then; pitying, sympathetic. Her father's hand had never left her head; now he ruffled her hair as if she were a pet; a silly dog that had romped in his bushes, plucked flowers from his garden. Mary struggled not to flinch. Even as a child, she knew it was best to play the fool. _

"_I know," She murmured, lowering her gaze to the bed beneath her curled figure, instantly feeling warmth penetrate her chilled senses, "Only…only a few more hours?" _

"_Yes," He said swiftly, taking his hand from her hair and turning his heel towards the opened door of her room, "Only a few more hours, and it will be daybreak. And everything will be back to normal again."_

_Mary's eyes widened. _

"_Everything?" _

_Her father nodded slowly, and it was then that she became aware he had been losing hair. The thick, black locks that she had gotten from her father, that she had identified herself with…they were gone in the course of one night, leaving a shining bald mass that somehow frightened her. _

"_Everything."_

_As he turned to leave, she pulled the covers to her side, wanted to hide within their warmth more than ever. Denial. Then, biting worry stabbed at her thoughts; and she had to know. _

"_Daddy?"_

_He slowed his walking, yet did not look in her direction. _

"_Yes?"_

"_Where's…" Mary bit her lip, "Where's mommy?"_

_Her father stopped in his tracks, hesitating. Mary felt true fear burst within her for the first time that night; he turned his head in her direction, his sinewy neck snapping in the stiff air, and gave her a leering, almost mocking, grin. _

"_Go to sleep, Mary. You'll see her in the morning."_

_With a choking groan from the hinges of the door, her father disappeared from her room and into the depths of their home. The house was different at night; Mary had learned this months before, yet had never truly accepted it. Even when she saw the first few changes in her father; changes that would carry on for years, changes that would defy the gap between nightfall and daybreak, when she would pray in her bed for hours on end that it would all end, that the sun would never fall. _

** oOo**

_Because when there was sunlight, things were always better._

There would be no sun.

Lady knew, as soon as she stepped into the vestiges of the city, that light could not possibly shine on this place, ever again.

What remained of the streets were sections of uplifted, concrete debris gleaming silver in the light of the moon above. Cars lay on their shattered backs, their insides gutted of burning metallic innards, once vibrant street shops carrying shattered windows of fallen glass and boarded doors, graffiti covering every inch of the ashen, wrinkled walls and the dead remains of deserted sidewalks like dried, black blood. There seemed to be no inhabitant but the few of them that walked across the city--and, she realized with a shudder, none of them were even completely human. Lady wondered if this entire place, its entire population, had gone to the monsters.

And then her feet crunched upon something hard and snapping, and as she looked down she received her answer. A skull stared back at her opened mouth, iridescent white maggots crawling through its opened eyes, lining its fleshy grin with the promise of death. She turned and found these bones lined the streets surrounding her, as numerous and never-ending as autumn leaves; a sea of mocking skulls, withered arms and legs, ribbed, rotting torsos cleaned of flesh by what she could only imagine as the hungry maws and ravenous teeth of so many demons--

"Dante," She said, not knowing why she had said his name in the first place. Maybe it was the closest thing to solace around her; the most familiar face, someone that had been on her side before.

He turned placid blue eyes towards her multi-pigmented gaze, and for a moment she felt at ease, the world around her disappearing, as if she were the one that were armed and protected, the one with strength, ferocity…

Her hand automatically settled upon her hip. There was nothing there but air, and the realization unnerved her. Where was Kalina Ann?

"They disarmed you, of course, when they took you as their prisoner,"

The eldest of the Sons of Sparda was watching her with unerring eyes, his monotonous voice glazed in bitter mirth. He found her peril amusing; found her gasp of shock a show of weakness. _Pathetic_, he had hissed, before changing her life forever. _Pathetic._

Lady's hands curled up into fists at her sides. She ached to have the smooth, ebony barrel between her fingertips, the comfort of heaving the metallic rocket upon her straining shoulders, knowing she had something heavy and strong to help her destroy, help protect her from becoming one of the corpse just inches below her feet…

It was her only keepsake. Dante had used it, once, before she had followed him, empty-handed save for grenades and grit determination, to the top of the Tower. She had clung to it, then, sworn she would never let go. And here she was, bare-handed, losing another part of her former self. How long would it take for Mary to fade away completely?

"Here."

Her eyes swept upward to find a pistol before her, smooth and shimmering like a jagged cut through the dull darkness. Lady's mouth widened in a gasp; Dante's features became suddenly stern, solemn before her as his gloved hand dropped Ebony delicately into her own. With his other hand, he folded her trembling fingertips across the body of the gun, his eyes never leaving her stunned face.

"It won't do you any good to run around in this city with just your bare hands to defend you,"

The red-clad devil said softly, his usually light voice saturated with a foreign deepness. Lady could only will herself to nod, a soft smile playing on her lips-one of the first genuine smiles that had graced her mouth for days. Ebony felt strangely heavy in her hands, yet she cradled it between her fingertips and found it was perfect.

"Thank you…Dante."

She wondered if he could smell it on her; the blood, the demonic scar inside of her veins. They were practically kin, now, weren't they? Demon and demon, curse upon curse…

"When you take more blood, you won't have need for such silly toys,"

Vergil's shadow encompassed their figures, drew Lady from her thoughts. She willed herself not to look into his cold, hard eyes, or what she knew would be the stunned expression on Dante's silvery features.

"Don't tell me," Dante hissed, disbelief in his trembling voice, "Don't tell me you _changed_ her!"

"She would have died anyway," Vergil retorted smoothly, a taunting grin upon his immaculate features. He began to pace in slow, rhythmic movements, walking in a circle around both Lady and his infuriated twin, "And do you think she would have survived in this place for a moment, as a mere _human_?"

A low rumbling growl emanated from the depths of Dante's maw. Fear sparked at the edges of her spine; Lady had never heard him so…beastly, so ferocious. Yet Vergil was cool, controlled, slick in his stoic demeanor. He merely chuckled at his brother's expression, didn't bother to flinch as Dante withdrew Rebellion with a hissing scrape of metal against the pavement.

"Lady might have had a fucking fighting chance if you hadn't poisoned her with your blood, you sick _bastard_."

Revulsion coated his voice with a monstrous thickness; the warning hiss of a devil about to attack.

But Vergil's countenance did not change. Clasping his hands behind his broad back, he walked towards his seething brother, raising a silvery brow,

"And what of Eva?"

A static rush throughout the air; Dante's eyes grew dark, his hand rushing towards Rebellion as Vergil brought Yamato down in a hissing arch through the air--

A scream penetrated the abysmal darkness, and Lady found herself screaming in unison.

Before them lay a child, drenched in blood. The child's tiny face was nearly completely covered in scarlet, save for its wide, frightened, pleading eyes, its trembling lips. Through his tiny body lay thick gashes, nearly cutting his small torso clean from his kneeling lower body. The only reason he was lying on all fours was because of his scarred, mutilated arms, as bloody as his disfigured face; yet shaking and convulsing as if they were inoperable, slowly dying with the rest of his slight frame.

Lady could only stare in frozen horror as a long, thick pair of claws dove forward from above the child's body and struck him forcefully across the back of his thin neck, forcing him into the sharp, glass-strewn ground. A sickening _crunch _filled her unwilling ears as the jagged debris embedded itself within the boy's throat, leaving rivulets of blood to pour in its wake. The child screamed again, louder than before, his wide, innocent eyes finally settling on Lady's,

"Help. Please."

Above him, the creature lay, its wolf-like maw dribbling with saliva, snapping jaws boasting endless teeth hanging with tendrils of rotten flesh, piercing black eyes gazing with carnal hunger at the whimpering boy's throat, wet snout sniffing the air in thirst. It was larger than the three of them combined, its thick black mass covered in dirtied, blood-caked fur, paws digging into the rubble below with the strength to pierce rock--

Strong enough to pierce bone.

Lady knew, from the instant the human within her went stiff with rage, what she had to do. She did not think when she cocked Ebony in her hands, did not even flinch at Vergil's scream to stop. She ran, as fat as her frail, clumsy human limbs could carry her, towards the dying child, adrenaline pounding in her head, tearing at her heart as she flung herself towards the snarling demon with her finger on the trigger. As the monster bore its maw upon the child's throat, its black tongue hungrily slithering across his neck, she pulled--

And shot a bullet straight through the monster's temple, sinking into the soft flesh.

Then with surprising ease, the demon howled in rancor as, its eyes bulging, foam dribbling down its opened mouth, blackened blood burst from its pointed ears, its head suddenly imploding in an explosion of gray liquid, smoking flesh, and black blood.

Fighting the urge to burst into tears--whether from shock or relief, she did not know--Lady rushed towards the fallen child and willed herself to smile.

"It's okay, now," She rasped, pulling the still-trembling youth into her unsteady arms, "You'll be alright."

"Lady!"

Dante's voice ruptured in her ears, caused her to look up in confusion. He sounded frantic; unnerved--she turned her head abruptly to look at him…

And the boy in her arms bared his fangs and leapt at her, his teeth sinking into her neck.

She hadn't had time to pull away; he was too fast; her body was filed with hot, searing, painful fire that pierced and burned every part of her body like magma, filling her pounding ears with her own screams of agony…

A rain of bullets sprayed the air like black stars, crossed her vision in thin lines that cut across the sky, filled up the body that was feasting on her throat, its twitching, shrieking frame suddenly limp as it tore itself from her throbbing neck, fell in a crumpled, wide-eyed heap upon the ground, smoke in curling wisps from the endless holes across its body. Lady touched her throat and found a cold stickiness on her palms. She drew her hand back slowly, gazed with blurring eyes at the trailing blood, tasted bitter iron in her wet mouth. The weight of the thick blood slipping down her neck, bleeding deep within her throat, formed a weight pressing down upon her lungs, filling up with heavy lead-the world spun, and she began to fall for the hundredth time, falling deeper and deeper into black--

Strong hands caught her by her shoulders, strong, infuriated curses filling her fading ears. Her consciousness began to flicker and stir more brightly than before at the sound of the voice; her resolve flitted to the surface, the blood pouring from her throat; what remained of her pure, human blood trickling away into time, suddenly becoming numb. She arched her head up to gaze into endless blue eyes, peering down at her with what seemed like genuine concern; Dante, the more human half of Sparda's breed, registering the sudden regaining of her composure with a triumphant grin.

Before her, a single, silver burst of light in the distance; Yamato impaling the thrashing child's body, from his head through his toes, cutting through bone, tendon and flesh as cleanly as paper. The look in Vergil's blazing eyes as he slicked the black blood onto the side of his coat with such relentless abandon was what made her finally turn and vomit hot bile upon the ground; his hard, glittering eyes, filled with cold pleasure at destroying the boy, at invoking his curdling screams, the sickening smile as he watched its carcass finally snap in half and bleed from its hollow, gutted innards.

This was the world as she knew it now.

All because of a mistake. A miscalculation.

A chance lost at killing her father when she should have.

Dante still held her in his arms while the blood, cold and thick, flew from her burning neck. It felt empty; hollow, yet it cut into her like acid, deeper than the wound itself, into the very bone. He spoke to her the entire time; his words had no sound, yet he knew she would not understand. They were senseless words, silly human words with frivolous human meaning that was made only to keep her conscious, keep her mind sharp and focused on anything but the stream of endless red that poured from the basin of her flesh. The devil pressed strips of his coat as a compress to her neck, ebbing the flow, yet her mind, her soul would never cease to bleed.

She could only staunch it through his death.

"Goddamn you, father," Lady suddenly hissed, her voice a weak rasp, breaking into a quiet sob.

Dante let her dirty his coat with her acid tears.

**oOo**

Things faded into a beautiful void. She grew numb from exhaustion; realizing a day had only passed, and she had never slept.

Was this how the ghosts stalked the Earth; restless, vengeful, bloodthirsty?

She had died; she had lost herself, all in the course of hours. And now blood was seeping from her body, and soon her physical death was imminent. She could count the days on her fingers, the hours before she would collapse and wither.

Oh, God.

_What_ God?

The same God that refused to strike down Arkham with a bolt of power. The same God that allowed that child to become infected with the blood of demons, allow it to be impaled by a devil. The same God that had imprisoned her in Temen-ni-guru for months and let her become the slave of Vergil himself. The same God that had allowed her mother to die in the first place, had caused her to seek vengeance.

And here they were, at the mouth of Hell. Here was the price she paid for seeking justice. For retribution. Here, in her bandaged throat, in her empty eyes, lay the aftermath of God.

He died with the others when the Tower arose. Died with the human bodies all around. Died with the souls of those infected. Died with the faith she had that she could live through all of this.

"Lady."

Satan called, and she would answer. Let God be spited, let him cast her away for her sins.

Yet she could say nothing. Words had betrayed her in the past, rendered her vulnerable, and if she spoke, she would only run the risk of crying again.

"Those demons,"

Dante continued adamantly as he guided her through the dark, deserted streets, his hand steadying her limping frame with inhuman strength,

"They aren't like you. They were bitten by full, wild demons…and so that's what they became. You can still fight it."

She knew she should have felt relief. She knew she should have said something; it was in her nature, to thank him for his aberrant compassion. Yet she saw in her mind the blade run through the child's body, saw her own body impaled only a day ago, felt the horror, the confusion…the look of pure, undiluted pleasure in Vergil's shining face. They were the same, she and that child. Crucified. They were his puppets, their pain his pleasure. Vergil enjoyed his fleshy toys, liked to make them bleed.

And all she could do was turn from him, her body growing cold and ashen as the corpses amongst the pale lights of the streets, and whisper.

"He should have let me die."

Dante merely turned his head away from her, grunting beneath his breath as he quickened his pace and refused to say another word.

Lady did not notice when they strode into the sanctum of Devil May Cry, did not remember the creaking wooden floors beneath her shuffling feet, the sight of the dust caked office with its cobwebbed telephone, molded wooden desks, faulty-legged chairs before a table covered with rotting bread, cheese, and discarded pizza boxes. It was only when Vergil's stern gaze was upon her did her mind react in spasms of raw, gluttonous, overpowering hate.

His piercing eyes were to her the dull color of a corpse's rotting tongue, his smirk the cloaked sadism of an axe-wielding executioner. This was his frigid justice, his means for obtaining power. And she was just another key to be used and discarded. She felt her legs give way to a sudden wave of vertigo; clutching onto the side of a chair, Lady immediately pulled herself against its wooden side, refusing to pull her eyes away from Vergil's.

She needed this hate to keep her strong, to keep her conscious. She needed this hatred to keep her alive; mind, body, soul.

"You're weak,"

He snarled from his position behind the table, standing stiff as a marble statue amidst rotting ruins. His gaze was just as stiff and stoic, enough to set her nerves on fire; he was mocking her yet again, a testing smirk along his lips, his hand stroking the silver blade at his side with steady motion.

_Foolish girl._

He had said it before; she knew it was what was still running through his mind in response to her stubbornness, her rebelliousness. And yet she said nothing, simply held his gaze, allowing her own to spit burning venom.

"What do we do now, torch the place down and kill everything that moves after?"

Dante inquired flippantly, breaking Vergil's steady stare as he crossed his arms to rest behind his head, leaning back on the two hind-legs of his rickety chair, feet slung over his table. He had been struggling to break the thick tension between the two; and, for a moment, it had worked.

The blue-clad devil gazed at his sibling as if he were scum on his shoes; abruptly, he shook his head.

"We wait."

"W_ait?_"

Lady's voice rang with a cold emptiness from her tired lungs. Her interruption had startled Dante to attention, even caused Vergil to turn hi alabaster head with graceful sharpness.

"Why the hell would we _wait_? I want to kill Arkham, before I die first!"

She forced her voice not to tremble, slamming her fist into the table as she spoke, nearly cracking the frail wood beneath her hand. Dante stared at her anxiously, his brow furrowed. Lady refused to acknowledge the sympathy in his gaze. Ebony felt cool and stagnant in her hands, almost heavier. She was growing weaker by the second, as the dripping blood darkened the manmade bandage on her throat; withering like a leaf.

Vergil pursed his lips.

"I still have Arkham's trust to my advantage. And you are my assumed prisoner, so our position in the city is viewed as perfectly allowable, and understandable. As of now they assume I am raping, torturing you into insanity-"

"Aren't you?"

Her voice shook, then. Free of grief, free of rage.

Empty.

"You could have died, you fool," Vergil hissed immediately, "It was your choice, and you chose to feed. The parasite does not blame its host for the blood in which it feasts."

She laughed, then; a sudden quake of bitter, hysterical chuckling from her parched throat.

"You _knew_ I wouldn't rest until my father died. You sick bastard, you're _using_ me."

Vergil's lips contorted into a hard, ugly grin,

"And what's so wrong with that?"

"Fuck you, Vergil!" Dante interjected, pulling himself from his chair with breakneck speed to press Ivory to his brother's chin. Vergil merely stood there, a silvery brow raised upon his immaculate face, lips curled into an amused grin.

"Does it bother you that I'm alive again, brother?" He retorted contemptuously, his hand immediately gripping Yamato's handle, "I'd think you were holding a grudge against yourself for it."

Dante's grip faltered; at that moment Vergil struck, his piercing eyes glittering even more brilliantly than the sword unsheathed with a bloodthirsty hiss into the air, clashing with the surface of the younger sibling's weapon.

"I'll gut you like a fish if it's the last thing I do when all this is over," The renegade devil said icily, pacing in a circle around Vergil, who followed in a dance of clashing weaponry; if the other faltered or moved at all, they would either be shot or impaled; and either blow, Lady knew, would begin an unending fight to both of her unwilling comrades' deaths.

She opened her mouth immediately to try and break up their struggle, yet no sound emerged; instead, a sudden stench filled Lady's nostrils, overpowering her logic, her thoughts, her frail rationale. She leapt to her feet, knocking her chair to the ground, her mouth hanging wide, multi-colored eyes wild; her stomach wrenched and twisted in stabbing pain within her and she felt her fingers begin to twitch-

"What the hell is going on, Lady?!"

Dante stared at her, his eyes wild, his brother silent, the fingers on his still-raised blade unnerved.

"Blood," She whispered; a word which came not from her lips, but straight from within her hungry soul. As if she were mechanical, possessed, she pointed a finger at the nearest window overlooking the city's dark exterior.

The window shattered completely into pieces of glittering ice in the air; Dante swore and instantly twirled his gun in his hands, shooting bullets like a madman at the source of the breakage, while Vergil watched calmly as the shiny, opaque body of the headless wolf demon flew through the office and onto the wooden floor, snarling from the gaping hole within its severed neck, ebony blood slippery on the surface of its once fur-covered hide. Lady could see then that it had been a human, once; its paws resembled thick sets of fingers embedding themselves into the ground, the broad back undoubtedly the back of what was once a strong man.

A flash of realization paralyzed her, and she saw herself in the pathetic scene before her; the already dying demon desperate for blood.

As Dante struck its twitching, bleeding hide with bullets, its eyeless gaze met that of the trio, and it rolled with incredible swiftness in their direction. Lady pulled the trigger on that instant, Dante shooting in unison, their hail of bullets cutting through the air and into the hide of the headless demon. Blood guzzled down its massive body as they shot, spilling cartridge after cartridge to clatter upon the ground, Vergil merely watching silently. It did not take long for the oozing, rippling demon to expire, its body rolling backwards to dissolve into a mass of black, tar-like flesh.

Dante twirled Ivory with a satisfied smirk between his fingertips and, walking up to the ugly black blemish charring the floorboards, groaned to himself.

"Why is it that _all_ these demons leave a damn mess everywhere they die?!"

He kicked the ground angrily with a boot and railed curses into the air, glancing hastily about the derelict room before going to scour his shop for some form of ancient cleaning apparatus.

It took long for Lady, who stood as silently as Vergil on her trembling knees, to regain her composure, for all that pounded through her brain were thoughts of the blood in its thick hide, the incredible thirst that made her throat ache. Her wound throbbed against her flesh nastily, murmuring in her veins and arteries for quenching, for power, for slaking the pain, slaking the discomfort with just a drop of sweet blood. Sweat dribbled down her collar, cool against her hot flesh; her conscious wavered, her eyes grew heavy--

A flash of blue before her eyes suspended her in mid-air before she could hit the ground. Her head hanging limply from his arms, she was a marionette again; disgustingly helpless, her strings drawn forcibly between her master's fingertips. The thought enraged her despite her ill state, and she stared up at Vergil, a jagged line of frustration marring her sweat-caked features.

"Don't _touch_ me," She snarled, her gaze ferocious.

Yet Vergil merely grinned.

"And you thirst, more than ever. You're almost on the verge of death, you foolish little girl. Come and drink, now."

Without wavering his adamant hold on her frail figure, Vergil slit a line across his wrist with the tip of his blade, a dark pool glistening against his white flesh. Lady whimpered, rolled her tongue from her lips at the tantalizing smell that invaded her nostrils, pulled her head forward…

And began to gag as she struggled to bite and swallow the pink mass of skin in her mouth.

"Damned wench!"

Vergil threw her to the ground where he landed with a hard slam, her back throbbing, her head reeling at the sight of his snarling figure hovering above her. His eyes were alight with pure, raw fury; even the pristine complexion, the immaculate, almost feminine features could not hide the boiling beast that threatened to surface and strike her.

"Why do you lie when you are killing yourself now?! You pitiful waste of life! I should have never entrusted you, human, with such a _gift_."

Lady stared up with her own burning eyes, her voice a stubborn growl,

"I _told_ you I would rather die!"

"Then _die_!"

A blazing, violet flame shot up from the depths of Vergil's skin, erupted across his limbs as if to devour him whole. Lady shirked backward in panic, her neck snapping against the wood with the sudden force of thick, bursting air like hard concrete slamming down upon her body. She struggled to cover her cringing face with a thin shaking arm, staring out of the corners of her eyes at the blinding spark of silver that was his blade, bearing down down down towards her body, its hissing in midair like a bloodthirsty scream to chop her in half-

Yet the metal stopped just inches from her bare arm.

Forcing herself to stare upwards in shock at the unmoving blade, Lady saw the feeble handle of a wooden mop clashing against Yamato with brute force, keeping the weapon at bay. It would have broken entirely if it were not for the formidable strength of the man on the end; a viciously smirking Dante, his eyes in a hard, cold glare that almost resembled the infuriated Vergil on the other end.

"Think you can just play rough whenever I'm not here to pull you along your leash, brother?" Dante snickered, shoving the handle of his dust-caked, ancient mop with a strong uppercut that threw Yamato from Vergil's white hands, twirling within the air and landing inches from Lady's paralyzed body, "Keep in mind you're the one that made her the way she is. Why not take your PMS out on someone who can stick it where it belongs?"

All that came from the mouth of the blue devil was an infuriated, blood-curdling scream. Lady had never seen him so enraged, had never even heard him raise his voice. His cry of anger seemed to shake the foundations of the store, caused a perturbed look to pass Dante's steely gaze. With that, Vergil flew from the room in another eye-watering blur of light; dissipating within the innards of Devil May Cry, and the thick darkness within.

Lady found it was quite hard to breathe when recovering from an incident of near-death. Her breath compressing in labored groans against her busily pumping heart, she uttered a belated gasp at the sight of the untouched, grinning Dante who had just kept her alive another second longer for the day. As he came towards her, reaching down to offer her a gloved hand, she gratefully took it into her own, her flimsy legs utterly unusable if she had stood unaided.

"Thank you," She managed to breathe despite her wounded pride, inevitably collapsing against him yet again.

This time he hoisted her with inhuman strength into one muscled arm, her body incredibly faint and hollow, as if it were drained to the bone of any blood within. Her heart pulsated faintly in her ears as if it were miles away from her flickering mind-and yet she struggled to keep herself conscious. She would not show anyone her weakness anymore.

"Close call, eh?" Dante retorted with a dismissive wave of his hand, and Lady realized, as she followed his grimacing stare, he was looking down at the remains of his once solid mop, which lay in two, clean-cut pieces upon the ground, useless without its broken handle.

"Was that going to be…?" Lady's voice faltered in her shock, "…_Why_?"

Dante chuckled,

"My brother rarely ever gets this pissed. This must mean he desperately wants you alive, and the only way to do that is to drink, obviously."

"Because…I'm a tool," She mumbled beneath her breath, watching him as he bent to pick up the broken pieces of his mop with one arm, holding her steadily in the other.

He hesitated as he did so, pausing to glance up at her with a suddenly stern expression. It was surprising how serious he had become since the…incident in the Tower.

"No…not just that." An odd emotion flickered across his face for an instant as his eyes met her own-and then, just as quickly, froze to be overcome by one of simple cockiness. The sight caused her to knit her eyebrows in sudden confusion.

"Vergil's a fucked-up piece of work. But I know him. And I know it's just not power he's after. If that was it, he wouldn't have hesitated to destroy everything in the Tower and use you on the very first day."

His eyes settled upon hers again as she found herself growing dizzier in his arms, her vision dim with the swaying of her body against him.

"And if he saw _you_ as nothing but a tool…he wouldn't care if you drank his blood. He wouldn't care if you lived past day one, as long as he could use your body as bait to lure in daddy dearest."

She shuddered involuntarily, her face paling. It was growing darker. She felt drunk for some reason; inept, unable to form coherent thoughts in her mind. Her heartbeat throbbed and jarred her frail mind; she shivered at the cold air between her temples, piercing her head like daggers. Dante noticed her trembling and chuckled,

"We're _devils_. Remember that, Lady. And I don't want you to die. So…drink up, eventually."

As he grinned and began to progress through the narrow halls to a tiny makeshift room which held nothing more than a low, dusted cot and a broken lamp, Lady willed herself to stop him with a whisper, her fingers lingering on his the crook of his shoulder. She did not know what was about to come from her lips, form in mid-air without coherent thought, but she did not care to stop it.

"Dante?"

"Hm?"

Her eyes grew heavy, her voice a low slur before her hand dropped to her side,

"Who is Eva?"

A pause. His gloved fist clenched with brute force onto the handle of the mop; snapping it into tiny pieces of debris upon the ground.

"You should go to sleep now, Lady."

As he disappeared, he did not bother to pick up the fallen pieces. Lady did not know when, but as her trembling hands clung to Ebony at her side for all the will left within her to stay awake, she fell into the depths of her cot in a fitful, restless sleep filled with the aftermath of unfinished thoughts and never-ending questions.

**oOo**

_It always rained, now. Rain clung to her body like a second skin, trickled down to coalesce with her quiet tears. It rained through the house, somehow; through an opened window, perhaps, a ceiling board busting from the pressure of the wind. It stuck to her, clung to her father's still, standing frame, made him glisten. It was red rain. Red rain made puddles against the wooden floor, red rain seeped in angry currents from her white clouded skin as she lay stagnant on the ground, a sea of black candlelight catching their reflections and illuminating them in dark light. _

_Mary had come in without permission; had picked the lock. She had intruded when she heard the first scream. She had interrupted his ritual, the jagged, bony knife protruding from the shadows of his cloak a silent confirmation._

"_Why don't you just kill me instead?"_

_The waxen face within the hood seemed startled; it paused in silence; Mary could hear the ragged breathing from the bleeding figure below, could smell the bubbling blood that burned the floor like acid. She knew this was not the end. She knew there were many more nights to come, nights in which she would lie in her bed and endure the screaming, the days ebbing away; endure her mother's limping frame at daybreak, the assurances that all was fine and well. _

_No more._

_She clenched her small fists, lip curling into a snarl. Multi-colored eyes mocked her own in their leering reflection._

_The woman screamed as her husband pushed forward with the heel of his foot to crush her collar with a sickening crunch. _

"_Just smell that blood," He hissed, his eyes closing, a long sniffing undulating from his nostrils at the strong, sickly liquid that pooled from her delicate lips, _

"_Delicious, your mother." _

"_No," She sobbed, her eyes glistening with heavy tears, _

"_Kill me instead! Do it! Let her live!" _

_And she ran towards him, her fists pumping through the air, screaming,_

"_Kill me!" _

_He chuckled, grabbed her hair in fistfuls, digging into her scalp with brutal strength,_

"_That's not part of the agenda, dear Mary," _

_With astonishing force, he flung her from his grip through the hanging, groaning door, his fingers ripping through strands of her ebony hair, cold liquid rushing down her scalp as her head connected with the floor. And as the door closed with a sickening, squelching groan of defeat on its hinges, Mary was left screaming to the deaf ears of darkness once again. _

_Powerless._

Her eyes snapped open and burned with the afterimage of his leering face. Instead of those irises that mirrored her own, she saw blue.

**oOo**

She didn't know how she had gotten to his room so quietly, had crept so effortlessly and slithered through the door without awakening him. Yet she didn't care. All she could smell was the pulsating life-fluid beneath his veins which ached to be free of his monstrous carcass. All she could feel was the adrenaline within her, set aflame by her thoughts, her burning rage.

Lady brought the barrel of the gun between his eyes. Her fingers shook on the onyx weapon, her irises closing for only a moment. Light dissipated on her frail frame, colored her white and immaculate in the deceptive cast of darkness surrounding them.

Here was the chance to end it. The longing budded in her heart, bloomed thorns in her blood. She would take the Apple and carve profanities in its surface; stab it until it bled, throw it back on Satan's lap, poison etched in its scarlet skin. In someone else's raw, red flesh-someone other than her own. And there he laid, his pristine frame angelic between the sheets-white on black, snowfall at night. She could taste the frost on her lips, watch his naked chest rise and fall like a hill of mounting tundra.

She wondered if her father had slept in such a way. They were the same man; lusting to the groin fro power, using her as the unwilling tool, manipulating to the death. Filled with demon's blood, they were no better than the dirt above Hell.

But when she shot him, would he truly die?

Would he simply scowl in rage like Dante had, when they had first met? And if she did, her tongue would run dry of taste-her blood freed of the damnable toxic. Yet it would still spread, thick and frothing in her veins, until she was completely infected.

Contaminated.

Dead like vermin.

She was dirt, too. The plot of soil above Mary's grave. And if she didn't drink, she would die. If she didn't fuck herself over, again and again, destroy her own humanity, she would die sooner never see her father crushed beneath her feet-and he knew this, all along.

He knew she could kill him if she truly wanted to.

But she would die as well. Self-damnation. Lady felt tears prick at her eyes; with a sudden howl of rage, her hand cocked and aimed straight for his face, stroked the trigger with her finger—

Before suddenly becoming crippled, paralyzed in defeat.

Ebony slid from her fingertips and fell in a quiet clatter to the floor, devoured by the darkness.

Two steady eyes watched her as she fell to her knees and wept, her arms around her chest, her head low.

"You didn't do it. Why?"

A note of confusion in his voice.

Had he thought her so cruel?

"I can't…I can't be like you,"

She murmured, her voice quiet and trembling. As if by some invisible hand, she fell forward, to the soft fabric of the bed, to the soft pull of Vergil's strong arms. She buried her face in the warmth of him, heard his beating heart beneath the sinew, beneath the blood. Lady became stagnant, yet even then she was remote; unyielding. Even then her fingers curled against her hand, as if she were still holding Ebony within her fist. She would never feel his hand as it rested lightly atop her own, would never feel his fingers brush the wet tears from her face, the stray strands of hair along her throat.

As she fell into a restless sleep in the arms of her murderer, she would never hear his whisper.

"I did it all for you. Only for you."


	5. CANTO V

Thanks for your patience, again...this is really beginning to pick up, and I'm glad with the direction the story is going in, though I plan on pacing this much better..well, Summer is here, so you can pretty much guarantee that. Things between the characters are going to get extremely complicated. It's almost like an extremely bloody Soap Opera or something...(in which Lady is the only female lead?) :)

Remember to review, and...

Enjoy!

* * *

**Black Candles**

** Five.**

**"Here lamentation, groans, and wailings deep  
Reverberated through the starless air,  
So that it made me at the beginning weep.  
Uncouth tongues, horrible shriekings of despair,  
Shrill and faint voices, cries of pain and rage,  
And, with it all, smiting of hands, were there,  
Making a tumult, nothing could assuage,  
To swirl in the air that knows not day or night,  
Like sand within the whirlwind's eddying cage."  
**-The Divine Comedy**  
(Inferno, canto III, l. 22-30** )

Daybreak seethed the air in rippling waves of fire.

Lady knew it was there before she could even awaken; the chambered nautilus of her mind screaming and thrashing in its bed of wiry neurons, her tomb-like slumber abated in the forceful jerking of her limbs, the clawing of her hands against the empty bed-sheets as if they were a crypt entombing her within. Her body was as light as fading wisps of fog in the air, vision twisting involuntarily into a soft, dizzying null as the fire suddenly ignited across her flesh, stabbed through her nerves like hot embers—

Yet she found herself lying in a disheveled bed, entrapped in the confines of a tiny, bare room; completely and utterly alone.

_Alone_.

Thoughts of the night before wriggled in rapid fervor within the raging tremors of her bones, her stomach-every inch of her ached, bubbled, flared with pain, hungry pain that shot through the marrow of her bones and she remembered flickers, fragments—a gun in her hand, death in her mind. And she hadn't…done it, but then what?

Then she was here, awakened by the feeling of magma against her sweat-caked flesh.

At that moment, the door imploded in a shower of wooden splinters, and the scalding sensation of searing heat mixed with the odorous stench of burning chaparral made bile rise in Lady's throat. The white, unkempt hair, violently cerulean eyes darting furiously and constantly moving mouth was thrown forcibly before her line of vision—features that could only belong to Dante, twisted into an unnaturally nasty grimace.

"Vergil!" He roared, his eyes scanning the naked room in a surge of vicious urgency, before falling upon Lady's frame, in which they suddenly froze to gawk at her.

Instantly, Dante began to search the bed for other inhabitants, a jagged, angry line marring his usual grinning face. The name made Lady cringe as the sudden realization of the night before came full-force.

"So did you see my brother after you fucked him, by any chance?"

Dante asked rapidly, his determined gaze seeming to hover above her head, jaw tight as ivory steel. Lady flushed at his words, suddenly flaring with anger at the perverse insinuations of the demon.

"No, I did not _sleep_ with your brother!"

The half-devil burst into a bitter chuckle, his strands of frosted hair chilling his otherwise stoic expression,

"Don't think I haven't heard it before. Besides, if you were lonely, you might as well have spread out in my bed, where it's much warmer. Though I can't say that right now…"

His fingers ran across the collar of his jacket, constantly opened to expose the taut muscles upon his toned chest, sweat dribbling in glistening rivulets, casting an unearthly sheen upon his already alluring frame. Lady felt a knot clench within her throat; her eyes flicked from the vision of his half-naked figure to suddenly narrow in shock.

"So…can you feel it too, then?"

Her whisper carried across the air in thick currents, thawing Dante's hostile gaze. He raised his head slowly in response, contemplatively,

"The fire?"

Lady nodded, an uneasy prickling stabbing across her spine, pumping ice within her veins.

"What's happening?"

"The city is being purged."

Dante's words came with an air of impartiality; as they flew from his lips, he raised the gleaming surface of Rebellion to his shoulder, running a gloved palm across the dust-caked surface of the nearest window. The patch of light that seeped effortlessly between his fingertips was tinted the jasper and scarlet that would bring to mind a sunrise, the cusp of dawn-

Yet it burned. It burned her nerves, filled her body with overwhelming, sweltering heat. She wondered if this were an instinct she had inherited—no, that she had been _cursed_ with during…that time when Vergil had fed her. Dante had seemed stunned she had been able to feel it, too, and the realization brought her hand immediately to the side of her kilt, where Ebony lay in waiting.

She frowned in contemplation, thinking of the discarded corpses and bones littering the outside world, the sheer mayhem. A cemetery 6 feet above the ground, the carcasses laid to rot, desecrated and contaminated. Wouldn't it be best for them to clean the city with flames, destroy the threat of illness? But then a horrible thought possessed her; clarified her instincts, shattered her frail composure…

"They're purging it of humans."

**oOo**

A siren sounded like a guttural scream in the quiet world.

It rang in her ears in desperate cries, filled her pumping arms and wildly working legs with sheer power. The scarlet blur at her side made a faint smile prick at her otherwise twisted lips; Dante was nearby, his blade glinting silver as it cut through the thick air, ready to lunge at any in their way. Lady did not care to find Vergil-all she could think of were the countless humans still in hiding in the city, what would become of them if the fire reached them, or if they were found by some other demon…

Flames exploded in the veins of the streets, gushing red across the ruptured earth, the crushed cement like gray bones. They rushed up to burn and devour the slated sky, its jasper and saffron skin melting away, crackling embers like howls of pain. Pain-it spread across the city, thick and smoking and gray, it shot across upturned cars in sparks of scarlet and ate the wood in raw, hungry strips from helpless homes. All she could do was watch this Pain, watch with her awed eyes and wonder how she could ease it. And before her, straight past the flames like a demonic red carpet, lay the Tower against the horizon, black and leering down upon the city. It struck the air like a charred testament of power, cackling down upon the dead and dying, an angry bruise in the yellow sky.

Lady's body was dissolving in the searing heat, the sweat of the flames mingling with the sweat of her own dazed thoughts as she stared down at the burning city.

"Dante," She whispered, and his icy gaze mirrored her own, frothing over with slaked emotion.

They ran, then, because all they could do was run; bodies heaving as they propelled themselves straight through the flame-lined streets, jumping over rubble glowing, incandescent and dying against the leaping infernos that massacred them. Burning heat ebbed away at the metallic walls of buildings, smoldered in hissing, noxious tendrils through the doors and windows of homes, and as she watched, she grew more frantic, more urgent—

"Lady, look!"

Her body jerked at the sound.

Lady followed Dante's scream and saw eyes.

Hundreds of eyes, faded behind fogged glass windows stared at them-their mouths endless black, twisted holes, their screams dead behind the burning houses.

"Fuck it, they're trapped!"

Lady broke into a run, shooting Ebony off with screaming fingers, the bullets embedding themselves into the wooden door before her, one of the many that lined the street.

"They aren't trapped, Lady. Someone sealed them in."

At once, Dante flung his blade into the thick wood of the door before them, its frail brown surface exploding around the sheer force of his weapon. As he did so, the screaming grew voices—shrill cries of bloodcurdling terror that sent pinpricks up Lady's neck. She ran through the innards of the house, greeted with thick curtains of noxious smoke that filled her throat and caused her eyes to prick with tears. Everywhere she turned, the tall, raging flames held faces—screaming, tear-streaked, ghastly faces, young and bloodied and covered in soot.

She screamed in pain as she plunged her free arms through the flames, the scalding heat lapping at her bare arm in searing, burning pain. With her gloved fingers she managed to grab children in pairs, pull them forcefully through the fires and toss them to the outside where Dante awaited. Crying, horrified faces twisted in the same pain that imploded within her passed her by; she grabbed at hair, at stray clothing, at burnt skin, struggling to save all and keep herself from burning in the aftermath.

When the room lay barren but for its still-flaming vestiges, she began to run out, to another home, when a child's scream came from above. The ceiling before her, before the door, was collapsing; she watched as white plaster fell like smoking rain upon the ground-soon the house would cave in, and she would be trapped…

"Help me!"

The scream grew louder, stronger; now there was uncontrollable sobbing, and Dante's voice rang clear from the other end,

"Lady, get the fuck out now!"

"No," She cried firmly, and ran up through curtains of thin flames to the stairs.

The huntress cried out in pain as they burned and seared at every inch of her exposed flesh; her legs were blackening, her fingers bearing cuts as she dug her hands into the wooden, splintered railing. The smell of charcoal invaded her senses, made her dizzy enough to faint, yet she pressed on, continued to ascend up to Hell.

"Hello?!" She shrieked between sudden spasms of coughs, her vision blurred and tear-streaked as she struggled to make out her surroundings through the sudden blinding blackness of smoke.

"Hello?! Where are you?!"

The floorboards quivered beneath her feet, ready to bust under her weight. Flames rushed and exploded all around her in vengeful bursts. Lady found it difficult to pull away from them as they thickened and sweltered. It was then that, when the floor beneath her groaned and she jerked away, she finally caught sight of a child, standing pale-faced and serene at the edge of the room, and then the spinning, metallic disc that rushed towards her in a flash of whistling, silver light.

Lady flinched, yet did not have time to pull completely away; instead, she leapt to her side and screamed as it embedded itself with a sickening lurch into the bandaged wound on her throat, sticking straight through. Lady couldn't register the flood of the multiple set of wide, red eyes that leered before her, or the shining, white-toothed maw of one of the many demons as it crushed the severed head of a child between its jaws. All that thudded hollowly in her ears as she fell through the breaking ground was the slowing beat of her shuddering heart; Dante's fading screams, and a deep, triumphant hiss.

"Got you."

**oOo**

Vergil did not move when the doors of the building burst open on their frail, groaning hinges, nor did he flinch from his position upon the wooden seat, fingers clasped neatly before his closed eyes, when his brother's erratic breaths filled the dead room.

"_VERGIL_!"

A long, beastly howl emitted from the guttural depths of Dante's throat, dripping with venom. Slowly, glassy eyes opened to reveal their glittering apathy. He craned his head slowly to regard his enraged sibling.

"You called?" He purred lightly from his seat, a smirk adorning his features at the sight of his brother; a scarlet incandescence gathered about his pale flesh, as fiery and menacing as the city surrounding them. This analogy made him chuckle. Ah, the irony.

"Lady is gone. She's fucking gone, and you're sitting there because you know she is, don't you?!"

"On the contrary," Vergil retorted coolly, his eyes gleaming with a catlike coyness as he spoke, "She is closer than you think."

A beam of light flickered and sliced the air to embed itself within Vergil's shoulder. He merely stared at it with indifference as it sank its silver teeth into the satin skin, ruptured it in a fountain of oozing blood.

"_Tell_ me."

"Can't you _smell_ it, Dante?"

The angry devil's eyes narrowed, reflecting his sibling's sinister smile in an effervescence of frost. Vergil seemed fully demonic, then; his nostrils flaring as he spoke, paying no heed to the blade that gushed forth blood from his flesh. He had lost some vial part of him when he had fallen into Hell, before—something irreplaceable, overwhelmingly _human_—and now he sat, pale and wan in the overshadowing red gleam of the city, and Dante realized why their shop had been spared from the flames.

"You did this."

A velvet chuckle burst from Vergil's upturned lips, caressed the air like a knife to a child's throat.

"Foolishness, Dante, to think I would sever my link as a servant to Arkham so soon. Of course I am still one of his own, and so I must play the _part._ I must sacrifice, I must allow death. Of course, humans must die for our greater good."

"Our greater _good_? You mean, for _power_?" Dante spat, his body lurching in disgust at his brother's words.

"Of course. What else, _peace?_ Human frivolity? I am past humanity, now, past its petty fixations on _emotion_, on _justice_. Death is inevitable. Let them all die. Let them all rot. This is something for which I did not pretend to support."

"And you would let Lady die now."

Vergil's lips pursed together so tightly they seemed to sink against his white, waxen face. His eyes were blue-lidded flames as he met his brother's gaze, and Dante did not see the Vergil he knew behind them.

"She is mine. She, too, thirsts for this power. We are corpses, brother, drawn to life by this vengeance. We don't die…but her body might," He mused, his lips a white, twisted smile.

Dante stared at the stark-white man before him, so pale he seemed almost transparent, a wisp of a solid form, of a human being, and he knew.

"Hell has changed you. Who are you, now?"

"Now, now, dear brother, go save the Slave before you question the Master."

It was then that Dante _smelled_ her, so thick it overpowered his nostrils in a suffocation of scent, and he broke into a frantic run, to leave his former brother howling with silent laughter behind him.


	6. CANTO VI

**Thanks to everyone for being patient with me :) This chapter is longer than the others and introduces alot of conflicts, so bear with me because it's going to get very complex. I was looking back and reading some of the other chapters, and I was thinking I might actually rewrite them because I'm slightly disappointed in the way they turned out...but we'll see what happens. This story is stretching on alot longer than I thought; I was going to keep it to eight chapters, but now that's impossible...it'll end up being maybe twice the size. Stay tuned for Chapter 7, and Enjoy:)**

* * *

**Black Candles **

**Six. **

**"Truly I wept, apposed upon the breast  
Of the hard granite, so that my Guide said:  
'Art thou then still so foolish, like the rest?  
Here pity lives when it is rightly dead.  
What more impiety can he avow  
Whose heart rebelleth at God's judgment dread?'" **

**-**The Divine Comedy  
**(Inferno, canto XX, l. 7-30) **

Nightmare.

That's what she would have called it, as a child—as Mary. Up until she was twelve, she would have nightmares of laughing clowns, monsters in closets…and she would crawl into bed with her mother and feel her hand on her head and be at peace. Even now, after her mother's death her nightmares still had severed heads, bloodied corpses, ripped, hollow eyes—

They were flickers of the grotesque at the constant edge of her human mind, gnawing at her comfort, security, sanity with each crux of sun fall; until recently, when these nightmares had merged into the horrific world of reality.

One of the many pains to endure when losing your humanity.

She lay in a never-ending web of nightmares, the screams and groans of desperation flooding her ears like crawling insects, her mind a blur of fading images. The ceiling above moved, thrived with dark life in its wooden ridges, disfigured, leering faces gathering and looming and fading like buzzing flies across her consciousness. Lady didn't fully realize she was being moved until she regained the feeling in her burning legs. Burning—as if she were still in the house, as if it had collapsed in an inferno all about her scalding, searing flesh, burning hot, white, breaking eggshells of cracked skin.

And yet, that had never happened.

She recalled the dull throb of pulsating pain in her neck, resurrected the sight of the silver flash of metal that had gashed her and the same, sickening tearing noise grated her ears as she felt the fire gather up in her legs and smelled the unmistakably alluring stench of her own thick, half-bred blood. She tilted her head, met the gaze of hundreds of saffron eyes, the smell of toxic, sulfurous venom dripping from their blood-caked fangs. They were shifting, heavy brown masses of slimy, liquid flesh that dug their maws through her bare white legs, dribbling acid and sores and her own blood before her inflamed nostrils, the own sharp fire of her innards fogging the sounds of groans and frightened whimpers surrounding her, intensifying her fixation upon the monsters before her. With their jaws and the force of their scuttling, hairy, impossibly long legs, they dragged her through seas of flowing white, and suddenly her nostrils no longer smelled anything but the sharp stench of sulfur and asphalt and she opened her mouth to scream yet the taste of thick, stringy cement flooded her mouth, stuck against her flailing tongue, her aching, burning throat—

As a spray of white webbing flew through the air before her suddenly alert eyes, Lady blindly threw her arms forward and thrust her fingers straight into the spider's eight, gluttonously wide eyes. A piercing cry like scratching metal, and her gloved fingertips connected with the feeling of thick, squirming gel as she gouged into its eyes, her nails pushing into the snapping membranes while all at once her head spun frantically and her webbed mouth gasped against the solid confines for air. The fissures of wincing eyes snapped beneath her fingers, and the black blood that spewed and bubbled down its face caused her stomach to lurch as it snapped its jaws wildly at her, its fang gashing at her shoulder before she pulled it back frantically between her hands, hot, acidic venom burning smoke into her gloves and piercing the skin beneath. Embers of pain flew into her flesh; with a sudden jolt of adrenaline in her suffocating body she screamed against the webbed confines of her throat, the burst of air abruptly filling her arms—and her scream was voiced by the spider's as its gray gums dislodged, collapsed, the fang snapping whole, the thick, cold puss falling across her fingers while she kicked savagely at the convulsing, flailing legs, her dazed, suffocating body in a rush of dizzy strength as she clubbed its bleeding head with its sharp tip, breaking fissures of slippery skin in volcanic eruptions of black blood and the unmistakable, wrinkled mass of even darker brain matter.

Finally, with another guttural scream as the heel of her boot connected with the crushed matter of the spider's opened scalp, the head, the hardened, too-human jaw…she realized it had _been_ a human, just as so many of the savage monsters had been before, and this wave of sheer anger that filled her caused her to plunge the bloody fang into the spider's torso with a sickening squelch, tear her dirtied fingers into the thick webbing of her mouth, rip its white mass from her nostrils…

Lady fell to her knees in coughing, shuddering spasms, trembling hands prying at the remnants of broken webbing stuck to the ends of her pale face, struggling to control her consciousness and gauge the sudden overwhelming flood of her senses into her dizzy mind.

Before her, she realized her nightmare would be far from ending.

Lady found herself lying heaving beneath clusters of flickering, dim lights, the rustic wood of the ceiling sputtering with coalescing shadows, the never-ending walls plunged into darkness. It would have been eerie, tranquil in a convoluted, haunting way, if it weren't for the miles of overlapping, iridescent webs in thick white ropes across the ceiling, dipped in the sickly yellow wax of the glow of the hanging bulbs. There were groans, whispers, whimpers flowing across her acute ears, reverberating against the walls in thin echoes; yet she could make out no human shapes nearby, no sign of life, the spider crumpled in a heap of upraised legs and congealed blood beneath her.

It was then that the realization of exactly where she was came full-force.

She was in the basement of Devil May Cry itself; a basement completely and utterly ravaged by the very demons they had struggled to destroy. Horror struck her frigid—she had to get upstairs, had to find the others, had to find the people still trapped in the flames of the city—

Lady was still holding the fang in her hands when a loud, slow clapping filled the room.

Instantly, an inexplicable, cold ice flooded her veins, frosted over in frothing hostility in response to the staccato of footsteps, the sight of the same, saffron eyes as the corpse beside her. Her blood tingled from the insides of her limbs, ached to burst forth from the dam of Lady's flesh and destroy the being in the darkness—an unfamiliar emotion, this foreign loathing, towards an unknown person.

_Vergil?_

"Impressive. Even stronger than a specimen hosting upon a full demon…perhaps I've underestimated the Sparda blood after all,"

The shape approached her, its outline of a tall, human male, though its voice was a rough hiss, bestial in its constant edge of hostility. A dark face fluourished from the blackness, nearly as dark as the shadows which engulfed him. The piercing, almond-shaped eyes were clear and translucent, reflecting the red blood in which his black pupils swam, twisting the handsomely sculpted face into the shadow of something sinister.

"Or perhaps, the strength of the human host is more formidable than the others."

He finished his thoughts with a soft hiss, his thin mouth caressing the human words as if they were rarely ever spoken by his smooth tongue. As he continued to stare into Lady's narrowed orbs, he plunged forward gracefully from the darkness, his body lithe and skeletal—thin in the thrall of ragged robes billowing from the darkness like smoke.

_Even darker than Vergil himself…_

The thought, the mere, instinctive _feeling_ drenched Lady in stabs of shuddering ice.

This was, unquestionably, a demon; his tanned skin stretched across his bones as if they were never meant to grace his slight frame, as if he had forced himself into this unwilling body. His eyes were nearly glowing in the thick, solid blood of his irises, the pupils the only indication he could see…compared to the too-human, blue irises of the Sparda brothers, he was Satan itself. A mere flicker of a glance upon his figure told Lady this…_being_ would never be the type to spare any human, child or savage; he would skin them all between his teeth in mere moments, and the image made her skin crawl.

As she formed these thoughts, a slow grin spread like the crack of fissures in his earth-brown flesh, a low, mirth-filled purr erupting from its depths, the flowing magma of his gaze appraising; violating her with its strength.

"Ah, what a _fine_ specimen. I wish to study you more. It is a wonder you survived the metal disc I embedded into your throat; even then, the onslaught of one of my hosts—"

He gestured to the fallen spider at her side, his grin widening,

"Was thwarted quite easily. So, so interesting…perhaps I can dissect you when I am finished killing you…"

Lady noticed sharp incisors protruding from his maw; the exact replica of the fang, lying limply in her upturned palms,

"_You_—you…" She struggled with her words against his intimidating leer, the inhuman snarl erupting from his throat, "You're the other one, that was dragging me—"

"Correct," The strange man hissed, a loud cackle from his corpse-thin lips,

"So observant, young human…if you weren't stained with the blood of that Sparda, I would have made you my own host—"

"And end up like the scum I just _killed_?!"

She spat, willing her aching legs forward, ready to run as fast as she could when he lunged for her, "I would rather let the Sparda blood infect me!"

"_Infect_," The demon purred speculatively, raising a thin brow, "Interesting…so much like Eva, in your false courage. Perhaps I should destroy you the same way?"

Her body tensed, a swift jerk of her blood and brains at the very mention of the name—

_Eva?_

Instantly, Lady's lips reacted, uttering the name before her mind could register the confusion of knowing a man she had never met,

"Mundus!"

The figure chuckled, "The host of _Vergil,_ then. I should have known!"

It happened faster than she could comprehend.

With inhuman swiftness, Mundus flew through the air, his solid skin dissolving in the breakneck speed like a wraith—melting from the bone, revealing the face of a shriveled, black, screaming spider—a breath expelled from her opened mouth, too fast for her to even scream, the pincer-like legs snapping through her skin, her flailing arms punctured straight through the palms, the _pain_ the _fire_ burning in the soles of the feet, the edge of her abdomen—she was twitching as he came to a shuddering halt, her belated scream dying in her throat as she suddenly coughed up gurgling blood, felt its hot, sticky trail don her chin, the same hot rivulets down her wrists, her boots, her stomach. Lady was impaled into the wall by the toxic, bony shards of the dead spider's severed legs, hung through her upturned palms, her dead feet, her convulsing stomach; pinned like a butterfly, like a dying Christ. Lady's body twitched, groan of pain garbled in the crackling of her blood-caked mouth, and Mundus only chuckled, his falsely human face boring down upon hers, his hard, slithering tongue licking away the scarlet river down her throat.

"Mmm," He purred, closing his eyes to savor her pain, "_Delicious._"

"Fuck…you," She gasped, her voice breaking, struggling to ignore the screaming of every collapsing nerve within her body, "I'm…going…to _kill_ you…!"

Her words were a coughing wheeze. Mundus burst in bellowing laughter,

"How fitting! Eva was the Christ of her family. _You_ will be the Christ of humanity."

Lady cried out, her voice raw with pure pain, strangled with anguish. Her palms pushed against the thick, venomous bone that pierced through her, an inferno of flaming needles bursting across her innards, her mind throbbing in her jarred head, tears falling in rapid, senseless sobs down her hard eyes. The blood, there was so much, dissolving to overtake the rippling skin like white milk, her vision darkening into flickering black, the screams of rage raw in her ears, intensified by the swelling hatred for this man, the swelling in her straining heart, her gasping lungs, her throbbing body—

"Strange…even when I begin to empty you of Sparda's blood…you still taste of Eva…"

And then, he was gone altogether, and she was left only with her screams, only with her breaking resolve.

_I'll die if I don't get out. If I don't get out, I can never kill __Arkham__…but I _can't…

Her eyes blurred with tears as she continued to writhe, struggle like a worm, pressing her full weight forward into the air before her, her back slick with blood from bashing into the wooden wall, her limbs bursting with _pain someone stop the pain_, her feet suddenly snapping and jerking forward, slipping further through the piercing bones, through her flesh to create deep holes as they slid mere inches across the bones penetrating them, and then her hand instinctively pulled forward and plu ged deeper against the bones like daggers, her fingers twitching madly, her heartbeat in her hands, sobbing like a child, there was so much blood it rained from the cloud of her skin—

"No, no, no, no, _no…_oh God, oh God, _no…please…"_

Lady fell backwards against the wall, back where she had began struggling to pull herself free, the overwhelming pain as her hands and feet snapped back through the bones impaling them, the jerking flesh snagging in gaping holes, making her immobile, bloody, gasping for air against her hunched, collapsed shoulders, unable to draw a breath save for her choked whimpers and cries into the darkness. She was trapped, pinned, and even if she managed to pull herself the long, strenuous inches across the length of the bones which impaled her, even if she somehow _survived_ the loss of blood, the unbearable feeling of _pain,_ the gaping holes within her palms, within her feet, through her stomach she would never, ever survive. She was a corpse, suspended there against the wall, a fallen Messiah failing to put an end to the death, the damnation, left to rot, ultimately alone.

As she lay, battered, pinned to the wall, her efforts succeeding only in making her weak, the darkness stretched its tendrils out to consume her. And she was so tired…

Lady's body slumped into a heap, her wings of resolve curling in on itself, and slowly gave in.

**oOo**

Vergil was the first to hear the scream of pain in Lady's mind, even when her mouth stopped.

Of course, he was within her, now; deeper than the skin above her pumping veins, closer to her blood than the spider bones rushing through her frail skin. The grim image played like choppy film behind his closed lids; he saw her face, lips contorted into silent, unyielding agony, eyes a stubborn mask of white, defiant to her captors. She seemed so powerful, then, so much like a true Devil, if only she had not been cursed with a human carcass to inhabit. They both shared he singular thought running through their throbbing brains, the mutual realization of an all-too grim, twisted logic—

If she stayed in such a position for much longer, she would die.

She did not drink when she had the opportunity—and so her life was flickering before her eyes, her frail, feeble human attempts at stubborn, self-destructive pride and _dignified_ retribution. Always for some good, never simply to slake the carnal thirst for power.

_Like Eva._

At this singular, stray thought, resonant with her own thoughts moments before, his fingers clenched into marble, his concentration faltering. Human thoughts, human reminiscences; it was with difficulty he struggled to push away the skeleton with its long, tangled gold hair, its eyes once pouring warmth, dead and hollow in his cold arms…his fingers on her bloodied cheek, his weeping…

"Damn you, Vergil."

A curse to the human within; how he ached to emulsify his soul, pry the flesh of his chest with his fingers and squeeze the pumping, pulsating heart into crushed memories; bloody pulp, a human relic. Even in the icy depths of Hell, even when he was mad with the solitude, tearing at his own flesh with his teeth…there is still his humanity, a pinprick of fault in otherwise flawless stone.

These memories hindered him from true power. From metamorphosis into Nelo Angelo—a true, pure Devil. This damned whore who, even then, roused a painful jarring in his heart at the sounds of her cries, kept him from simply abandoning his plan and losing control of his human side…this elaborate scheme to foil Arkham, to use her as a worm—was it for his benefit, or for his destruction? For life, in power and silent mourning over the past…or for death, and with it, an unsanctified life?

_And yet your blood sings for her human mouth upon it once more. It starves, like a filthy pup for touch…_

Did the dog not become a vestige to its parasite's whims?

_You co-exist with __human __scum,__ your ties deepen and slacken with the Devil's. Power is numbed by the flesh of man…_

"And what do _you_ suggest?" Vergil hissed into the air.

_Either she__ shall die by their hand, the blood consumes her—or you destroy her. Power must breed power._

The impurity of his blood…to be cleansed by the possession of this demon. To simply destroy his final reminder of human life, the girl's tainting touch upon his brain…in exchange for the taste of power, pure, uninhibited, unlocked from Sparda's vain attempts at withdrawal—

"Hell must hold sacrifice, to slake its thirst. And so I serve."

And Vergil drew his blade into the air, seeking to silence the screams of Mary's mind—

And within his own, the Demon smiled.

**oOo**

Dante noticed when Lady stopped screaming, even as he cut through the endless, hissing bodies of the spiders bursting forth for him from the dark depths of the basement. Their eyes were the premonition to their advance; he couldn't see their long, hairy bodies until they were brought to the surface by his blade's edge, gutted and soaked in blood. Spider after spider jumped forward with their flailing arms, and as they did he would shove Rebellion in rapid, blurred bursts of strokes that impaled their huge bodies and simultaneously dove him forward , down the stairs with the sheer momentum of his cuts.

As the tenth spider in seconds flew for him, Rebellion soaring silver and burning through the air to shove its hungry blade straight through the hairy torso, he strained his muscles and pushed its body from his sword to the ground beneath his feet, and, jumping upwards, mounted its still writhing body, grabbed its thrashing legs, gave a whooping scream as he tipped it so that it flew down the length of the stairs, knocking all around him away from his advancing body in its sheer speed. As soon as he reached the end, Dante leapt from the spider's struggling body, shooting bullets into its bloodied torso as he leapt through the air before landing upon the ground to search frantically for the missing huntress.

"Where is she," He growled in frustration, breaking into a run through the dark, solid mass of the room. Rage sputtered across his pale face in scarlet splotches—the basement of his own _shop_, his _home_, covered in endless webs, streaks of blood, the undoubted hatching site of demons and their hosts.

Hatching site.

_Lady._

As the thought came to Dante's mind, the white-haired devil broke into a run, his body a scarlet streak in the blackness of the basement,

"Lady! Where the fuck are you?!"

In an instant, he received a grisly answer.

The groans that penetrated the air captured his attention, slowed his pumping legs as he gazed in bewildered horror. Before him lay bodies; countless clusters of hunched, crawling, unconscious human bodies in the depths of the basement; women, children, men of all ages, whimpering prayers, curses, pleas in every different, garbled language. They had been taken from the city, during the fire, driven out of their homes and into captivity. Instantly, his reflexes shot to his fingers as he brought his hand to his blade—yet he couldn't possibly save them, _all_ of them, drag them, kicking and screaming through the masses of demons before they were torn limb from limb. Before him, a little girl was crying for her mother, bent over a crippled, unmoving body, clutching a ragdoll to her chest. He passed the crowd with extreme restraint, his knuckles clenched white, the voices, confused and frantic, flooding his mind, the drones of an elderly man, far and yet near,

"Our father, who art in heaven…deliver us from evil—"

The voice became a breaking sob, a desperate, struggling plea as fear swept, thick and odorous and terrible throughout the crowd,

"Pray for our sinners…now…and at the hour of our _death_…"

A great, resounding cry of the throng; shock, panic, faces streaked with tears flashing by—and still, he ran past them, pressing onward through the shaking bodies, knowing he couldn't waste his time; he couldn't help them, it was too late—

A hole in the wall before him, oblivious to the pressing, panicking crowd; he ran for it, even at the sight of the hundreds of yellow eyes filling the blackness like daybreak—

"_Amen._"

Even as Dante plunged his body through the depths of the broken wood, he could still hear their bloody screams.

**oOo**

_Mary kissed her mother's hand and the ugly gashes that covered it. _

_"Mom, you're hurt again," _

_She whimpered, clutching to her arm, "Let's go to the hospital. Let's go see a doctor. Please, mom."_

_But the older woman, her raven locks pooling over the cuts along her immaculate throat, shook her head, her crow-footed, jade eyes wrinkling into a sad smile,_

_"No. No, it's too late for that, dear. It'll be okay in the end."_

_"The end?"__ Mary's eyes grew wide, filled with vain hope, "When is it going to end?"_

_She drew the girl's head into the crook of her shoulder. Her skin was cold._

_"Soon," She murmured, tangling her fingers through Mary's hair, "But promise me something."_

_"Anything, mama," The girl whispered, her head against her mother's chest; hearing her slow, soft heartbeat for what she feared was the final time._

_"Promise me, that if something happens__ to you…you'll keep fighting. Don't worry about me."_

_Her eyes widened into pools against her mother's chest; iridescent, silent tears trickled, died away in the chalk white of her skin. Mary's hands became fists, her eyes clenched shut, and she knew how the night would end. _

_"Yes, mama," _

_It came in a breathless whisper; yet her mother's lips twisted into a forceful smile, and then, hours later, Mary would awaken from her nightmares and find trails of blood across the floor, the agonized screams that filled her head a lullaby to last forever._

Shifting, shuddering shapes of color burst through the emptiness behind her closed eyes. Even as she regained her consciousness, Lady did not register the swirling mass of blue overwhelming her stinging eyes until she heard the familiar voice.

"You truly are pathetic."

Her eyes flew open, sudden strength budding in her strained, throbbing body. She was broken; yet his words filled her with an abrupt burst of consciousness, her own words a soft, quiet stutter,

"V-Vergil…?"

Vergil only stared at her with glazed, unresponsive eyes.

"You're starving," He retorted, his voice an emotionless sheet of ice, "I came to…end your misery."

The scrape of metal; the unsheathing of a blade.

_Yamato_.

Horror dawned upon her, the emotion filling her dead brain even against the null of pain,

"No," She suddenly sobbed, "You can't."

"I _can_," Vergil spat.

He broke into a run in her direction, Yamato roaring through the air towards her bowed head—he swung it forward in a yawning arc, sheathed it with a sudden click.

Faster than a second, quicker than a wisp of air.

Lady only gasped as, instead of her own skin, the ends of the bones which pierced her flesh fell to the ground in resounding clatters, her stomach churning in sharp bewilderment. He turned towards her stunned face, yet it was as if he did not see her through his clouded eyes.

"This will hurt you," he murmured coolly, and with quick jabs of his wrist begin to pull at the bones through her hands.

She screamed—it was hard not to, her hands throbbing as the sharp bone tore through her flesh, slow and agonizing and violating, her nerves shattering as fresh blood trickled across the wall beneath, her twitching fingers, her aching throat as she _screamed_ and _screamed _and _screamed—_

Fire in her palms, in the soles of her aching feet, burning her flesh, spots of shattered vision, tears falling in currents—_God, the pain, stop it, __stop__ it—_

"Stop the fire! Please stop the burning! _KILL ME!_"

Her anguished cry as the final bone sliced itself through her abdomen to clatter to the ground—and she fell, almost floating, from her crucifixion, her body lying crumpled in Vergil's cold, dead arms. She was sobbing senselessly, then, her body a withered leaf, throbbing and useless and disjointed,

"Please," She whimpered, begged, her mind was _aching_, dead, her lungs compressed from the frantic screams, her urgent breaths, "Kill me."

"I can do something better," He murmured, cold ice on her forehead.

It was dark—she couldn't see through the pitch-blackness, it was so thick, and she was so tired…

Screams in the distance, like rolling waves breaking the surface. Dante's scream; he was fighting, destroying her torturers…

_Mundus_

They would never find _him_…his red-slitted gaze burning bright in the depths of her brain, reflected by Vergil's stiff stare…

When would it stop? It was so long, the torture…before Lady, when she was Mary. She just wanted rest. The dark scared her; it was like the cell, the confinement, the suffocation. She needed to escape, but she was too weak…too thirsty…

"Help…me," She sobbed, her body slick with wet blood as she flickered in and out of consciousness, "I don't want to die!" She heard the cracking scream in her voice, the flood of desperate tears. In her mind, she saw the scratching on the prison walls, the frantic search for an escape; a hole, a sliver of light…

And Vergil opened the door again as an intruding warmth connected with her cold, numbed lips.

"Live, again. Take this power for your own."

To be strong again.

What were the consequences?

A flash in her mind—a rush of black, the scarlet-eyed stare of a man as he ripped into the flesh of her mother and she screamed screamed _screamed_ and he smiled—

_If something happens to you…you'll keep fighting._

_Yes._

And she drank.


	7. CANTO VII

**...Wow. Um. This took me FOREVER to update. But I can explain. I never realized how extraordinarily busy I'd be in college, and now winter break is looming (and finals, but I haven't studied for them yet, ahem, so that's besides the fact...) But yes. Demonic Divulgences is seriously suffering from a writer's block on my part, but I will update at least once on that as well before January, promised. As for this fanfic, the next chapter will be coming much sooner than you think; in fact, it's lying dormant in my notebook as we speak. (!!) **

**Thanks to everyone that's been supporting me with kind messages and comments, you all know who you are. This 'fic will NOT die until I complete the stories of Lady, Vergil, and Dante in this peculiar alternate dimension setting of the game, and do so satisfactorily. Which means much more character development and plot ahead, as well as action on the part of the villains. I didn't mean for Mundus to play such a vital role in this, but he just sort of...cropped up in my mind while I was typing, and I like making my stories as sinister as possible, what can I say? **

**Anyway. Enjoy, please, better chapters coming! Thanks so much to everyone for your patience, and please keep up the amazing reviews, they're all very much appreciated.  
**

* * *

**Black Candles**

**Seven.**

**"Midway on our life's journey, I found myself**

**In**** dark woods, the right road lost."**

-The Divine Comedy

(Inferno, Canto I, l. 1-2)

_**Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary—**_

_How much prayer did it take to save a soul?_

_The tree stretched up for miles, ages, eons; longer than the sky itself, black and tangled, its branches sprawling their ten-fingered hands out to grasp the Heavens, always just out of __reac__. She dug her nails into the thick dirt at its feet, lying on her belly like a snake, ready to climb upward, as far as her body could possibly allow, claw her way up and beg—_

_And then a little child with blue and brown eyes stood at its trunk, too small and insignificant to __rever__ reach the top, her calves at its roots, her eyes wide, face whimpering in awe—_

_Her body jerked in panic; she was warning her—__**no, stop, run!**__—but the words were a wheeze, never leaving her lips, and the girl turned and stared at her and her brilliant eyes rolled to the back of her head and her trembling hands were filled with holes and her small mouth oozed and dribbled blood down her tiny body—_

_"Our father who art in heaven—"_

_Blood became __slitted__ red eyes; the dribbling line down her chin a red smile, __st__ into the hollows of a dark face; the lips moving, silent, she was engulfed in silence yet the older woman with her strange eyes was throwing her head back in wild, frantic prayer, the dangling crosses glittering gold against her pale, scarred skin praying, pleading,_

_**Save me save me deliver me from death deliver me God please oh God oh God—**_

_The red-rimmed eyes burning, the woman's screams becoming hysterical, desperate sobs, groans, and then those eyes belonged to another as they tore into her, her body bursting and collapsing in broken scars like crosses, the blood enough to drown in, pooling at her ankles, and God was laughing, the priest's tanned head was pulled back in laughter as the woman flailed and begged for her life and she couldn't help her she was too weak she couldn't even __**scream—**_

_A sudden flicker of light; a woman in white, against the black, spinning altar, against the blood that pooled across her white dress , the veil slipping from her white-blonde hair and falling limply to the ground, just as the body before her, just as she, too, began to collapse—_

_The laughing, red-eyed face met __her own_

_"__Mundus__."_

_And the skin congealed, paled, a laughing skull, the hollowed eyes—_

_"Daddy?"__ The dead girl whimpered. _

_She ran from the black, bloody church, ran to the tree, plucked the white fruit from its gnarled fingers with all her strength—and then its limbs sprang to life; __spasmed__, convulsed in seizures, flailing madly in the air as the fruit in her too-small hands became black, shriveled, rotten, and as blood spurted from its trunk, its branches, its roots, Mary drowned in it._

oOo

The taste of thick iron and bile in her mouth as she coughed and sputtered was enough to convince Lady she had nearly died. As she laid, practically immobile, within the confines of her bed, Lady's body was, not for the first time, encased in sweat, casting an iridescent sheen upon her pale skin like candle wax dribbling against a dying flame. She didn't have to guess she was in her "makeshift" room; the suffocating closed corners were enough to signal Lady to her surroundings. Yet her eyes merely darted upon her surroundings in less than a minute, as her fingers were more intent on pinching the bridge of her scarred nose as she struggled to _concentrate_, not on the skull-splitting ache behind her tightly closed eyes, but on the visions seeping beneath them like toxic.

_Those eyes._

They haunted the innards of her mind like a phantasm; possessing her thoughts completely, if only for those few moments in which she brought herself to acknowledge them. Lady had seen that red, pulsing stare too much in her childhood; and now, apparently, they had decided to visit her again, as bright and iridescent as stars in the blackness of her subconscious. But something had triggered it, and she _knew_ what.

Mundus.

Her fa-…_Arkham's_ eyes had been a perfect mirror to the enigmatic demon's. Even as he tortured her, she couldn't latch herself away from the hypnotic sight; the too perfect replica, if not more almond-shaped, more _exotic_ than the human-turned-Satan, it was still frighteningly close. And the woman she had just seen, the woman who had died right after her mother in that fucked-up dream…

_Eva?_

Yes. The name floated effortlessly to the surface of her mind; she _knew_ it had been her, the strange blonde woman, so blonde her hair seemed as if it could easily turn white at will…

_Dante's…mother?_

But she had seemed all too _human_, hadn't she, dying there in Lady's thoughts? Eva, with her thin frame snapping like a twig beneath the mere gaze of the wicked, laughing man; Eva, her immaculate wedding dress soaked in thick pools of blood; Eva, opening her mouth to scream only to loosen her lips and watch weakly as the blood became bubbles of oxygen escaping to the floor, with her breath, with her life.

To think _she_ had given birth to Dante, and…his brother. An accident, maybe?

_No, Dante isn't a bad person; not in the slightest._

Dante had even been running through the basement of the building to _save_ her, when she was trapped in Mundus' sick torture device…if it hadn't been for Vergil ripping her out of its grip like some sort of experimental butterfly, Dante would have saved her.

_Or else, found me dead of blood loss._

The thought didn't elicit even a shudder from the girl. Somehow, death wasn't a terrible thought anymore.

And that was when she heard the scream.

It wasn't anything like the bloodcurdling cry that she knew was at this moment threatening to shatter her eardrums; it was primal, beneath her own flesh in the way it rushed through every nerve of her suddenly-trembling, suddenly alert body, wrapped around every artery and every snaking vein and filled her with an abrupt, fleeting panic that dislodged her thoughts from deep morbidity to pumping adrenaline. In an instant, the sable-haired huntress leapt from the balls of her feet, tearing through the air of the room, pushing the door opened with such force it nearly flew from its frail hinges, stumbling across the dust-caked, rickety wooden ground beneath her wildly rushing body as she neared the dark orifice of the basement yet again.

_The basement._

For some reason, she saw the tree again; saw it before her, as if it were tangible; saw the many branches that twisted and writhed through the air, saw it leading downward, deep, deep down, into its wide, sloping trunk, wide as two gleaming jaws ready to snap, ready to devour. She saw it in that passage, saw that beyond the abysmal black, there would be nothing but blood.

_I'm in too deep to survive all of this intact._

Perhaps there had been a sliver of her with hope; a dormant seed within her body, begging to be watered by some godforsaken, desperate wish that the guttural screams from below, the wooden crypt surrounding her, the steps before her, blood-caked and littered with the demonic corpses she had killed only mere hours ago before being tortured herself—

She had hoped, with the smallest, most desperately human part of her, that it had all been a dream.

A nightmare.

_But even nightmares end eventually._

Lady braced herself; her palms still stung where she had been impaled mere seconds, minutes, hours before—(Time slips away so quickly, what was the use of keeping track?) Ebony gleamed, curled between the fingers of her right hand, as she flew down the stairs in cyclone-envious speed, faster than she could have remembered she was capable of, more determined in her attempts to push away the nightmares she had recently suffered, her own qualms and worries of the world around her. Perhaps when she saw the gruesome scene she knew awaited her, the source of the horrific screams, she would feel nothing more than pity—

After all, Devils don't cry.

And what choice did she have?

oOo

Her breath fluttered in wisps of fog against the unnaturally cold, frigid air all about her. She was holding Ebony, cocked and ready, against her still-trembling fingers; a mixture of inevitable anxiety and an automatic response to the deathly chill encasing her body, her feet making swift, precise staccatos against the hard ground. The clicking of her boots against asphalt was interrupted only by the random splotches of dried blood which held the acute stench of rust and iron, the interruption of broken limbs like twigs she so effortlessly leapt over—(strange, how much stronger she was, after she had been poisoned by _his _blood again)—human or beast, she could no longer tell, and forced herself not to care.

_Pretend you're the monster you are becoming. Maybe it will be easier, that way._

And then against the thick, solid silence penetrating the air, a sudden groan of pain came from below her, so deep and so desperate it shattered the careful iciness of her heart. Instantly, she jumped uneasily upon her heels, swung her gun down towards the weak, quiet whimpering, almost like a wounded animal, high and squealing and tormented—

And Lady was staring into a pair of all-too human eyes, a woman's eyes, from the depths of the darkness surrounding them.

She couldn't help but gasp; with a shuddering start, her lips twitched, and Lady fought every fabric in her being not to scream.

The whimpering continued, intensified in its strength as Lady met those eyes, became drawn in by the hypnotic sight of her pain. Every shallow breath she took emitted bubbles of bloody air, bubbles that popped and trickled down her bleach-white chin, and she almost seemed to be _crying_ blood, her face was esconsed in scarlet, like a second skin, and it was then Lady realized with a gasp the thin, sallow blonde woman's body was twisted at the torso, her legs flailng upwards with protruding bones from her gashed flesh, her back facing the sky as if in desperation for mercy…she was twitching, trembling, sobbing, her crippled, blood-caked body inching towards her in desperation, thin slivers of ebony scars trailing across her upturned, gashed scalp. Her fingers, the thumbs severed at the bone, deluging the remainder of her shaking, gashed hands with pure red, dug themselves into the thick cement, the nails snapping before Lady's eyes, dislodging themselves against the ground behind her as she scraped her way forward, her desperate sobs trailing in endless tears from her bloodshot eyes, her lips cracked with seas of red between her teeth as she continued to whimper, moan, scream in pure _pain_…

"Please," She sobbed, her voice nearly intelligible in its shaking, "I just want to find my daughter…_please_…"

She was grabbing Lady's ankle in both of her trembling hands, now; Lady gasped and struggled for balance, staring into the hollow eyes, knowing exactly where her daughter laid—

"Your daughter's rotting her pathetic little carcass away, just like you!"

The voice almost seemed to come from her own lips in its haunting familiarity; but then the woman unleashed a horrific screeching cry, and Lady saw the metal blade slice through the woman's twisted back, severing the flesh and bones that held her there with one effortless stroke, the deluge of ebony blood like a fountain's spray of unfettered life.

"Why?!" She gasped, as the woman's upper body writhed sickeningly like a squirming insect across the ground, as her eyes rolled to the back of her head and her tongue slid from her mouth, her arms flailing as she spewed forth her innards…

And then she was still, wide-eyed and dead.

Laughter.

Vergil's simple, euphoric laughter as he sheathed the sword slick with death against his hip, his eyes glassy, almost vacant as they watched the corpse beneath his immaculate feet.

"She's contaminated like her little bitch. They'll _all_ become monsters, in due time, and even if they weren't…"

The nearly pitch eyes narrowed, almost glowing in the subliminal darkness; with a mirth-filled snarl, Vergil's lips turned upward into a wicked grin, "Well, why not prune a few more weeds from the garden when given the chance?"

Lady twisted her eyes shut, turning her head to the side and simultaneously fighting the urge to retch; the sight disgusted her, _he_ disgusted her.

"_Monster,_" Lady hissed, yet despite the words that dripped like acid from her mouth, her body felt strangely numb, as if no hatred was left to ignite her nerves. And yet her mind screamed at him, ached to harm him—

_It's the blood._

_I'm as much of a monster as he is._

Vergil regarded her as a mouse scuttling across his floor; as filthy, perhaps, as the corpses on the ground—the cemetery.

"Use that blood to your benefit, _girl!_ If you die, we can just as easily destroy Arkham— "

"And what about _Mundus_?!"

She suddenly cried out, the "we" Vergil had so carelessly used seeming to never directly address Dnte. His sneering words had unnerved her; she wanted to watch him squirm—and just as anticipated, Vergil flinched slightly, the opaque irises sliding towards her to narrow fluidly in agitation. The stoic mask had shattered for once—and it chilled Lady's spine at the chaos kindling beneath his icy glare, the eyes somehow imbued with a darkness not unlike the looming of shadows behind him, within him.

"_Mundus_" He hissed, walking towards her, his feet carelessly stepping over crumpled bodies and scattered limbs, "What would _you_, a pathetic little _parasite_, know of _Mundus_?!"

Dante was hunched forward with a sudden jerk of his limbs, Rebellion tense at his side, a flash of scarlet between Lady's poised frame and the brother's intense gaze. The flash of scarlet was an ominous mark amidst the crumpled bodies, Dante's coat a smidgen of the blood that boiled within Vergil's darkened gaze. Yet Lady was stubborn, her brows set against her own narrowed eyes so tightly she could feel the pressure upon her head, her fingers quivering beneath the bloodied gloves and her palms that throbbed adamantly with pain.

"Mundus killed someone, didn't he?"

She chanced the question, the blonde woman floating serenely through her mind, dipped in blood like dripping wax…two pairs of dagger-sharp eyes pierced through her, and realization sank its length into her brain—

_I've got a dysfunctional family too, you know._

Dante's own words as Lady became aware of the piles of corpses lying on the basement like a human holocaust, the sheer numbers victimized by none other than that red-eyed devil—

_All this…for power?__For vengeance?_

Lady's bi-colored gaze was transfixed by the colorless face of the latest kill—for calling them "human" was too painful a term. The body's bloody hair soaked its face, entrenched the ripped jaw with jagged lines, intensified the dead, wide-eyed stare…

_How low must we stoop for this power?_

"Tell me!"

Vergil's voice was high and tense, his blade raised as if he would go to impale her again, and yet she couldn't stop gazing into those eyes, eyes of pitifully weak, soon-to-be extinct, humanity…

_Think of it as evolution._

Mundus with his dead eyes as he tasted her blood, dissected her like a specimen….infused with Vergil's blood, Sparda's blood, _just like Eva—_

_Specimens.__ No longer human—_

Lady reeled backwards even as the corpse's body began to shake and quiver, even as its eyes rolled and twitched in their sockets.

She was grabbing Dante's shoulder, jerking him with her as the corpse's blood-curdling screaming filled the air, lunging and piercing the ground which Dante had just left with its teeth, uprooting concrete before lunging again for the snarling devil. As it jumped forward Lady pulled the trigger frantically, hot and vicious in her aching hands, the hail of bullets piercing its mutilated body yet only slowing it down mid-jump. Dante shoved his body to the side as it swept its maw forward to bite at his leg—Rebellion flying in an upward arc to slice through its back. The corpse screamed a loud, bestial cry, its blood-shot eyes wild and wide as it jumped upwards still through the air, teeth snapping for Dante's neck—Lady grabbed at its torso and swung it upwards as his blade impaled its throat. With a sickening crunch and screech, the coprse was immobile, save for its flailing limbs and snapping mouth, the soulless eyes seething black with thirst. Lady was gasping at the sight of the former human, her limbs shaking at the full understanding of Mundus's work in the corpse's screaming, thrashing face.

"He's…he's pumping them with his venom, his blood, like me."

Bile rose to her throat at the sudden overpowering stench of the dead—surrounding her in fallen clusters, compressing with the stares behind their closed lids, their undead thirst…

The huntress fought the urge to vomit, a dull, throbbing pain in her hands, her feet…

Cold ice gripped her body like a vice, and she was falling backwards, the realization a leaden weight against her lungs. Dante was holding his blade upwards, his face twisted at the sight of the writhing coprse on the other end like a worm on a hook; it was snapping its maw viciously at him, lifeless gaze somehow filled with black, unquenchable thirst. Vergil held Lady still, then, just before her head could touch the dirty ground, unbelievably cold and frigid. She thought she could see the tundra in his gaze, thought his touch would kill her of frostbite.

"You were impaled by that bastard's bone. But I sensed no venom…"

A clatter, a monster's scream; Rebellion lay in a heap of silver twisted hideously by the suddenly still head of the corpse, its hair a red mask over the shredded face. Warmth collided with frost as Dante grabbed her from Vergil's grip almost violently, his sibling sneering as if in disgust while Lady was pulled upright to the shaking balls of her feet.

"If that's all true, the dead fucks down here will all be having a party in less than an hour. I say I check Lady for any of Mundus' trace and we torch this place,"

As Dante spoke with feigned frivolity, his voice strained and cracked beneath; destroying headquarters beyond repair? Lady's eyes widened and she yearned to protest, yet Dante seemed to anticipate her,

"There's no other way, Lady. You want them all on our asses at once? You see how long it took to kill headless honey over there?"

She bit her lip and pulled away from him, eyes scanning the darkness almost yearningly.

"So what are we then? _Refugees?_"

Dante merely laughed; a dark, bitter laugh.

"Haven't we always been?"


	8. CANTO VIII

**Author's Note: **Eep. Don't kill me. Actually, this update is a time of celebration, because I managed to escape my writer's block which has been holding me captive for a very long time, and frustrating the hell out of me (as you could imagine.) It's pretty strange, the way I got out of it, was through a minor car accident; because right after I found myself bursting with the desire to write, and full of ideas. Weird, huh?

Anyway, here's Chapter 8! Yay! The primary reason I've actually brought myself to continue this story besides the fact that I am DYING to get to the climax, which is what I originally thought of first before thinking of anything else in this fanfic, is because of my reviews. THANK YOU GUYS SO MUCH FOR REVIEWING THIS FANFIC AND STAYING WITH IT FOR SO LONG. This thank-you extends to those who have read Demonic Divulgences, and it's been a very long time since I have updated that fanfic as well, so I am getting to it, I promise...these fanfics have been hard to write, admittedly, because I've been trying to consistently give good quality writing in each chapter, and to make sure it all flows smoothly. And they're both going to be epic (though I honestly don't know how much longer Demonic Divulgences is going to be). But yeah--this chapter deals with alot more on character interaction and shedding some more light on Dante, because I feel as if I haven't paid as much attention to him as my other characters, and that's not fair, is it? It also starts to hint at the love triangle I mentioned in the 'fic's summary...ahem. Yes, things are going to get much more interesting, and I will continue this even if it kills me! PROMISED.

But one humble suggestion of mine: Feedback. I crave feedback. I think it's essential in improving a story so that my readers get the best out of it, and I think reviews are pretty much the most encouraging thing ever when it comes to updating these fanfics which are harder to write than they look. So I encourage the people who have story-alerted and favorited my Devil May Cry fanfics to PLEASE leave a review when they do this--it really helps get things done alot faster, and keeps me motivated and interested in writing these. And it also lets me know what aspect of the fanfic you guys like, what I could fix, and everything else. I'd GREATLY appreciate it if you dropped a review, even if it was a one-liner, or a simple phrase of encouragement or constructive criticism. Thank you so much.

* * *

**Black Candles**

**Eight.**

_"Avarice, envy, pride,Three fatal sparks, have set the hearts of all_

_On Fire."_

-_The Divine Comedy_

She didn't know how she had managed to climb the stairs, how she could have waded through the bodies without the paralysis of inevitable fear that they would awaken and lunge at her. Lady was staring down at the cemetery she had ascended, the cold and thriving hellhole that had once been the center of keeping such monstrosities at bay; her refuge, soon to be destroyed. It lay divulged in the darkness, cold and dead, just like everything else in this world, everything else in the nightmare.

And now Lady was staring at that black box of darkness that led to the sloping stairs, the horrors sealed away beneath, as if it were an omen to her own, inevitable fate. Hadn't she been young just a few years ago? Hadn't she been silly and naïve, delicate and frail, always crying, always begging to be held? And now the gun shuddered and trembled between her aching fingers, a violent imprint to stain her dirtied hands, and now her blood was running with the epitome of darkness, of monstrosity…

"I suggest you receive more blood before we destroy our headquarters. It will be a taxing journey, after all."

The cold voice penetrated her, as it always had; her body grew overwhelmed by his presence, her blood quickening in response to his own, buried securely within demonic veins. She turned, very slightly, to gaze at Vergil's face, bringing herself with surprising difficulty to glare into his strangely glassy eyes, eyes which were narrowed in opaque mirth.

"You've learned your lesson, haven't you?" Vergil challenged, a wry smirk gliding across the ice of his face, "Mundus nearly destroyed you; would you rather remain a hindrance to us, or fight just as strongly by our sides? The city is infested with demons. We can't take our chances."

Ebony prickled at the edges of her fingers; Lady's breath stilled in her lungs as she fought the urge to raise it straight for the half-devil's head,

"You're a liar, Vergil. We both know I still have enough strength in me; why do you insist on doing this?"

The mocking gaze seemed to darken, the smiling face twisting into a feral snarl. Vergil walked forward, and Lady did not move; she willed herself to stand her ground, willed herself to use Ebony if needed. The half-devil's face was contorted into something inhuman, even more savage than his usual threatening snarl, as if the traces of humanity in his body had been sucked away by some monstrous, alien force.

"You _reek _of him," He hissed, walking so closely towards her Lady could feel his cold breath against her prickling skin, "You _reek_ of that bastard, Mundus, and it is taking every fiber of my very being not to slaughter you at this moment, so tainted your filthy body is by his touch. You are but a corpse to me."

"That's not my problem,"

Lady retorted instantly, her own gaze as vicious as her snarling counterpart. Vergil seemed to snap, then, his eyes widening into onyx saucers, yet before he could respond another threatening snarl broke the wave of tension,

"Good to know that when the entire world is in peril, we can always count on you to want to kill the babes that have the most potential of saving everyone's asses. Damn, Vergil, you sure know how to use that logic!"

The voice shattered her sudden haze of aggravation; Lady snapped her head sharply to meet the smug, slightly irked smirk of the mirror counterpart to the Devil that had been threatening her. Immediately her heart fluttered in her chest, which she guessed was simply the euphoria of being distracted. A swift, cold breeze rushed through her; the sensation caused her to turn her head in Vergil's direction, and, stunned, she found he had disappeared in a matter of seconds, like wisps of air in the room.

Dante stepped forward, sneering at the empty spot once holding Vergil's two, wickedly amused feet, his ebony boots clacking against the hollowed, groaning wooden floors. Lady found it difficult to even meet his gaze; her mind swam with the recent…experiences she had been through, the pain of being near-crucified still throbbing thickly in her searing palms, her aching soles. As if to emphasize this, the Son of Sparda's smooth frame inched towards her, his long fingers brushing against her still palm. She immediately winced, her eyes adamantly plastered to the dust-caked floor beneath them.

"I thought so," He murmured in response to her reaction, his voice strangely gentle, "Lady. Look at me."

It took an eternity for her to reply. At first, she drew in a deep breath, finding that if she placed her aching hands limply at her sides, the pain seemed to lessen. Perhaps if she spent her entire life crippled and unmoving, like the rag doll she had been made out to be…

"_Lady._"

The sudden sharpness in his usually calm voice; sharper than the curve of his blade, sharper even than Vergil's constant, sinister tone, brought her diversely flecked eyes to his pale, wan face. Strange, how he and his brother were lighter even than snow, as white as a corpse sucked dry of its soul, on the verge of decaying; yet at once he seemed so deceptively _animated_ with life, as if it were a trick of God's when creating him. If it weren't for his piercing stare, his all-too human sigh of frustration as he watched her for that still moment, she would have been forcibly reminded of a corpse dug up from the grave and given life by some chuckling deity. Yet he was a _handsome_ corpse; try as she might to instill in her head that he was still, and always would be, _half-devil_, Lady couldn't keep herself from studying his sharp features; the strong, prominent jawline, the appealingly thin smirk , the glittering azure eyes.

_Mundus__' eyes weren't like theirs…not in the slightest._

The thought made her shiver; and before she knew it, she was staring expectedly at Dante, her arms crossed snugly before her chest. The pain in her hands caused her nerves to explode; she winced again at the fire, and cursed herself for it.

"Mundus really hurt you, didn't he?"

Slowly, he dropped his curiously bare, large hand to grab at her own—she shirked backward slightly, yet grudgingly allowed him to trace his fingertips along her screaming life-lines, the tips of her digits. It took all her restraint not to whimper—her limbs hurt enough to _kill_, and right then it wasn't such an unappealing idea to her. The ebony-haired huntress followed Dante's gaze and finally noticed the thin, spidery scars meeting in jagged lines across her flesh, almost like a _design…_

Then her brain began to snap in place, to distant memories of before, of her childhood, when she had been religious, when she had gone to follow her mother on Sundays of vain prayer and fasts and singing—

Crosses. Bloody crosses, the scars leaving imprints etched along her lifelines, as if to mar the God-given design for eternity.

As her eyes widened, Dante nodded quietly,

"I see. This is his _mark_, what he leaves behind the bodies of those he tortured. You know, Mundus was always a God-fearing man. Well, before he turned, at least."

_This_ was enough to jerk the girl's attention from the immense pain to her Devil companion's voice.

"_What?_"

Her voice was a hiss. Of all the demons she had constantly destroyed in deluges of bullets and grenades, she had _never_ fathomed any of them had once been human…not before her own…_victimization_ by Vergil. In fact, according to both of her captors—the recent one being their current topic, the former currently residing in the same residence, this mass transformation of human to demon was fairly recent.

It was as if he had read her mind, or perhaps simply the shock on her now colorless face, that made Dante reply with a wide, almost sad grin,

"Yes. Demons don't just spring up out of Hell to torment, rape and ravage, you know, as _much_ as you think they did. I mean, sure…the lesser ones. But people like…like Mundus, well…"

He dropped her hand and began to pace, suddenly deep in thought. Lady watched him, her thoughts frantic and displaced as she struggled to make sense of the recent revelation.

"…Mundus never liked being human, you know. He thought they were scum, thought he was too _weak_ of an entity. And so he always craved for more. More satisfaction, more fulfillment. This led him to turn to God, his crutch, his meaning of life. People pray to cure inadequacy, some of the desperate ones."

She knew, all too well. Flashes of the cross held tightly between her mother's fingers, her utterances of constant prayer night after night, just before the screams and the cries that would make her hide beneath her pillow, drowning in her own tears…

"_God._" Lady groaned the word, more from stunned bewilderment than confirmation to Dante's words.

"He must seem pretty damn familiar to you," The silvery-haired man inclined his head to meet her gaze, continuing, "Just like your daddy dearest. And _believe me,_ they'll both fall the same way, too."

"You're…" Lady's eyebrows knit together, "You're going to kill him?"

"Damn straight I am," Dante retorted smoothly, and his hand clutched onto the hilt of his blade, constantly at his side, as if to quench the bloodthirstiness of its shimmer, "_Me_, and nobody else."

That unmistakable greed in his tone was reminiscent of her own, and she understood. A strange feeling of kinship filled her mind, then, as if Dante were her own twin, albeit from different parentage; _very_ different. Which led her to think…

"Wait. If Mundus was…human, originally, what about you and Vergil?"

Dante hesitated for a moment. She didn't know why, yet felt as if she didn't have the right to ask; instead, he walked towards her and gestured to a chair sitting nearby in his office, and she obediently sat, watching as the vigilante Devil unrolled strips of clear white—were those _bandages?_—to unravel upon the ground. He stuck his free hand out, and she hesitantly took it, biting her lip and wincing yet again to keep the pain at bay. She squeezed his fingers _hard_, however, wanting to voice her nerves collapsing in the most productive, non-verbal way she could.

"Vergil and I…" Dante replied after a long silence ensued, in which he pulled the roll of gauze to Lady's trembling fingers and began to wind it around her first hand, "We were born the same way _you_ were, and any other human was. Just…with a demon as a father."

If she had any control over her facial features at that moment besides wincing and biting her lip, she would have raised an ebony brow,

"So…they…fell in _love?_" Lady failed to keep the harsh skepticism from ebbing along her words, and yet Dante did not flinch at the tone of her question.

"In human terms? I guess so. But I suppose that would be hard for you to believe, since you hate all Devils, so you can just think of it as breeding, or rape, or whatever your little prejudiced heart desires."

_Now_ he sounded irritated, grabbing her other hand in his with more pressure than was necessary—Lady jerked her body backwards at his strong grip, drawing in deep breaths that sounded like frantic hissing. He didn't apologize, yet continued to wind bandages around her other hand. She glanced at her free hand and saw it bathed in a sea of white gauze, expertly sealed, and wondered internally if the Sparda twins had ever suffered any wounds so mortal they would have to resort to these human methods of healing.

She doubted it.

"I'm not prejudiced," Lady suddenly retorted, feeling more anger rise along the bile in her throat than she usually felt at any of his rude remarks, "I'm turning _into_ one of you as we speak, how can I hate what I'm going to inevitably _become_?"

At first, Dante opened his mouth to argue her statement, and Lady predicted it would be against her supposition she would lose control and become as despicable a demon as those they had recently faced. But, seeming to think the better of it, he pursed his lips tightly and instead murmured,

"You'd be surprised."

The double meaning in his whisper did not escape her. And yet, even then, her own hatred and lack of love for _anything_ at the moment did not escape her, either.

"I suppose I already _have_ grown to hate myself."

At the sudden jerking of Dante's head, Lady continued,

"I mean…I'm going to commit _patricide_ in the end, for God's sake, no matter what happens to _me,_ whether I transform into some hideous demon or die of blood poisoning or marginally survive, the latter of which is probably _very_ unlikely. Sometimes I think I should have been trapped in that tower all along, awaiting my death, because then at least I could still be the human _me_ that I've known all these years, at least I could still spite Arkham in some direct way before I died. Now I have no idea when I will die, and I'm still a prisoner here, to the fucking _blood_ of your brother! And now my days are numbered and Mundus is here and the whole world is going to come crashing down because we _failed_ so fucking miserably to stop Arkham before and we're just paying the price, aren't we, for letting so many lives fall between our fingertips and letting so many humans die as a sacrifice of our own fucking _failures_. I hate it, I hate everything, and if this keeps going on I don't know how long it will be until I fucking _crack...or just die._"

Lady found the tears escaping her as soon as she had found herself again, her voice a nearly inaudible whisper,

" I just…I just wanted to _help_ everyone…"

Dante seemed to watch her for an eternity, his hands meticulously winding her white ghost of bandages, sapphire orbs never faltering, never looking down at the sudden onslaught of tears—always straight through her, as if her nearly transparent skin were a fleshy window.

_Into _what? _My…_soul?

Her brow quivered at the thought; she doubted, even as she cried, that her soul would linger for much longer in her filthy body. She was a mess of thinned flesh, protruding ribs, bruised skin; as hideous in her crumpled exterior as the blood boiling and seething beneath. And to think that she would end up as rabid as Mundus…or her own _father_…

"Mary?"

The gruff voice brought a tremor to her thoughts—her blurred eyes flitted upwards to meet the startling, sudden intensity of Dante's.

"What…"

The girl's voice drawled pathetically at the sound of the name, so foreign and empty in the air,

"What do you…?"

"You know what I mean. You're not going to fucking change. Not for anyone."

The strange gentleness in his gaze with the contrast of sharp determination in his voice—so different from years ago—seemed to bring a curious shudder to her nerves, a chill in her very heart. The feeling enthralled and frightened the _hell _out of her, all at once.

"I…I'm really not human anymore," She murmured, lowering her gaze to the endless expanse of unraveling white across her palms, "Not even Mary anymore. It's too late…"

Her lips were pursed to dam the flood of tears that further threatened to break. Lady wouldn't cry anymore, not in front of even Dante, as he was _still_ a Devil, still the endpoint of damnation to what she would become. For a long time, heavy silence muffled the air, choked it into stagnancy—

Then, a sudden rush of warmth through her fingers made her realize her palms were cupped in Dante's large, white hands, drowning in them.

"You've always been Mary to me," He replied quietly, "And you always will be."

For a long time, Dante sat with her bandaged hands in his own, running a lone finger across her digits, her white palms, the tip of her wrist…as if he wanted to find her life lines, read them, take her fate as his own.

She shuddered again as—unexpectedly—the soft surface of his pale, cold cheek brushed itself against her fingers, his hand on her wrist.

"Dante…?"

Yet he said nothing, just placed her hand against his cheek, taking in deep breaths between his curiously parted lips, the gesture almost sad. Lady merely watched, unable to figure out why, despite the incredible warmth filling her at his touch…she felt nothing.

Even at this miniscule moment—the merest _fragment_ of affection—not a feeling stirred within her limp insides; even when Lady knew she should have felt the jump of her heart within her throat, the flutter of her breath in suffocating gasps.

_You are but a corpse to me._

Her hollow innards sang the grim tune from Satan's lips, dripping acid in her ears—taunting, torturing, tearing her apart. Her palms seared with pain as she jerked them abruptly from Dante's cheek to the penetrating cold—so cold she shuddered at the sudden detachment.

"Lady?"

She was glad for the piercing pain in her healing hands—if not for them, Lady would have let the tears fall at that very moment—tears so painful they would undoubtedly cut through her skin like glass.

"I can't—I…"

The girl shook her head, locks of ebony shielding the expression in her eyes. Why was it that she felt as if she could cry tears of emptiness, feel nothing but air? So…_dead_? The concern in his voice made her stomach clench,

"I'm sorry." As if for recompense, her white hand gripped Dante's with such strength she could feel its slow, throbbing pulse in her ears.

She did not look straight into his clear-cut, sapphire gaze for fear of what it would reflect—a wan face, the pink scars innumerable as stars, the sunken cheekbones, the quivering mouth, red-rimmed, trembling eyes like a white rat's…_if she screamed now, would it be human?_

Her head still lowered, the girl pulled herself to her feet and escaped through the halls of the Devil May Cry, straight for her only source of both madness and sanity.

_You are but a corpse to me._

If Lady could feel anything at that moment, it would have been rage.

**oOo**

Dante knew the way this would all end, somehow.

He recalled flipping through the pages of a molded, dust-caked tome as ancient as the bones that now lay beneath their basement—some human's treasured possessions (though he never understood why people would store their treasures on vulnerable, delicate paper). It had mentioned slaughters, burnings, (what else did they need this week, a flood? Or, perhaps, locusts?) what was it all called? Armageddon?

It was slightly plausible. At least, if not for the fact he was not religiously pious (he was a _Devil_, for God's sake), it would at least give his exhausted limbs a chance to rest, knowing the genocide of the human race was completely and totally out of his control.

_What would they call that? The sin of omission—or was it commission?_

That one Devil wasn't enough to handle an onslaught of Hell.

_But there are two of us._

_Two?_

His lips pulled into a crooked grin at the thought, as he eased himself from his knees against the office floor, rolled the gauze in his hands. He saw Vergil, with his shimmering eyes sharp enough to cut metal—now vacant, dull, a blade having gashed and worn away against too many victims, a matter of time before it would shatter.

_But then…he'd always been the _ambitious_ one, hadn't he?_

The thought made him want to spit. Of course, this thirst for power was what fucked them all over in the first place, his brother's sick ambition going so far as to tear away the seal their late father had so painstakingly created, unleashing total chaos upon all mankind and infesting him, while in Hell, with the soul of a demon and ultimately damning Lady's human life as the final price of his greed…

_Greed.__Gluttony.__Avarice._

Funny, how, when hundreds were dying all around him, the threat of one girl's life was the "ultimate" priority. Funny, how Arkham's very spawn—no, his _daughter_—had become so…haunting the past, painful year, and even now, she was a ghost to his reality; pristine, immaculate, untouchable in her grief. White, like her bandaged hands, even the new whiteness of her flesh wasn't enough to bandage the pumping blood beneath—the vulnerable throbbing wound of her very human heart.

She was too deep in this, now; too deep to come out anything but unmarred and unhurt.

But she wouldn't change. Not completely; he _knew_ that, somehow, he had to believe that. She wouldn't become a mindless, hideous little monstrosity; maybe parallel to himself, perhaps.

God willing.

_Shouldn't it be __**Lucifer**__ willing?_

A bitter chuckle from his lips as he pulled himself to his feet.

If Dante were to believe the ache in his gut, even Mundus—that fucked up _bastard_ of a devil—really was present in this…Armageddon. They were fighting three wars, now, three for the three who cared too much about quelling this world's inevitable fate.

_We'll save it one day, save all the people, all the battered victims…and then some sort of meteor will crash down and crush us, or a nuclear bomb will decimate us, or a plague will hit and we'll all drop dead anyway._

_I guess that's the sin of Pride, then, isn't it?_

He abruptly brought his hand to his abdomen and wondered how it would look, hanging in strips of flesh on a metal pole, or perhaps lying forlorn upon the blood-soaked ground, how quickly it would all congeal when splattered against the walls. The younger Sparda twin seriously doubted he would live to see Lady through her poisoning—and if she were so unfortunate to _survive_ after the coming onslaught, he hoped to be at least in enough of a coherent piece to please please _please_ find an ultimately fruitless way of helping her.

_Help. We're all too fucking __**beyond**__ help._

The grim voice in his brain was a dull hiss of untouched truths, and, truthfully, Dante was all the more thankful for those lone shreds of sanity which showed him how insane he truly was. Perhaps this long year of mourning over the supposed death of both his brother and Lady, of the horrible, nightmarish disbelief that he could still do anything to destroy the demons flooding even now into the hideously destroyed world, perhaps it had all grated on his sanity, worn him down to nothing but a horribly emotional half-Devil. Or perhaps he always was insane, and _this_ state of his, this all too _soft_ and strangely mature state of dysfunctional Nirvana was his brain's last resort of sane logic before he would soon fuck it over, fuck himself and his short-lived life as an assassin hermit in the process.

_We may be Devils, but we're still mortal._

Lucifer was too selfish to lend anyone else some immortality in this bleak reality, even those born as damned as He was. And Dante had lived by the logic of a suicidal optimist, a kamikaze pilot, perhaps, a martyr bent on lobbing off as many heads as he could before his own would fall, inevitably, to the ground.

_If I cut through everything with my blade, battles will stop and people will be alright again._

The warring pacifists he had read so much about recently in wrinkled papers, seen in static glare on television sets; subconscious effect, maybe. Crude logic in his lighter, happier eyes; he had been so young, then, 19-something and so horrendously fucking _naïve._

How soldiers must feel, when they war for a "good cause," face an undetected trap or gun and get blown away. You hope you've hurt the enemy enough that they will stop their onslaught and you can save a few, a lot, too many lives, who will breed and fuck and lay "eggs" and self-sabotage and seek immortality through blood deals and destroy themselves completely, destroy their lives, shatter your sacrifice and your very reason for living. Slowly he traced his fingers along a strip of bandage, thinking, lifelines were this fragile, weren't they, so easily torn and stripped away as soon as you're ready to make something of it, ready to fix things for fucking once.

And even others—as soon as they grew close to you, they'd just as easily rip into ribbons of severed flesh, pieces, fragments of a fettered soul devoured by Time and utterly raped by Fate…

_Raped.__ What a pleasant way to describe your mother's demise._

He shook his head, immaculate locks of hair failing to shield the discomfort in his glassy eyes. Failed to shield, from his mind, how strangely similar _her_ features were to Eva's…

He had sliced, hacked, gouged, impaled, stabbed, decapitated, throttled more demonic entities with his bare, calloused hands than he could keep track of, and yet the death of a loved one was so unspeakably _brutal_ to him, still haunted the un-holiest depths of his horribly fucked up half-breed's mind at twenty. When he was only a toddler, then, he had pissed himself and cried and cried and cried until he bled tears, bled from his wounded heart to match the heavy thick pools of ruby that coalesced in frothing puddles, lakes, oceans up to his tiny knees as the remnants of her crushed face lay broken in his arms, his ears filled with his brother's quiet, helpless whimpers, his tormented screams…

_You fucking kill demons now, and you'd still cry about a memory. Shows how soft you've gotten._

Sometimes he thought possession _would_ be so much better than coherent, flawed thought, simply to prevent the constant lapses into the past.

And, honestly, he could see that very same twisted sanity of his fading from Lady's flame-and-ember colored eyes, that same questioning of her own dilemma—and that _scared_ Dante more than anything. He was, after all, part human; and that side, that side with _emotions_ was enough to make him worry.

He couldn't hear Vergil anymore. No laughter, no walking, no breathing—his twin was reaching farther away from his consciousness, far enough their blood ties weren't enough to hold them together.

And Mundus was here, lurking. What else would occur in these few days of Devil's bliss?

At that, Dante's eyes narrowed, focusing for a moment upon the slate-gray sky outside. He thought its ghosts of thin, ripped clouds resembled a hopeless, battered corpse; its screaming, gaping mouth pitch-black nebulas beneath ripped, hollow eyes.

It encompassed them all, and he thought, perhaps, they were just corpses all along.


	9. CANTO IX

**Author's Note: **

Hm, okay, this next chapter will be quite different. Just as I gave Dante a good chunk of characterization, I have decided to delve into Vergil's thoughts, perhaps only in this chapter, and maybe a few select more…it's shorter than the others and just a brief glimpse into his character and what the hell is going on with him, but I think it fits along with the rest of the story pretty well, as you will see. It might even explain a _tiny bit_ of his obvious sadistic nature in this fanfic when compared to others…but maybe not all that well.

Thank you to everyone who reviewed, favorited and alerted this fanfic, as always. You guys are incredible and honestly are the reason that I keep writing this stuff. Thank you all, and enjoy.

* * *

**Black Candles**

**Nine.**

_"__Here sighs and lamentations and loud cries were echoing across the starless air, so that, as soon as I set out, I wept. Strange utterances__…__and voices shrill and faint, and beating hands-all went to make tumult that will whirl forever through that turbid, timeless air, like sand that eddies when a whirlwind swirls."_

-The Divine Comedy, The Inferno, Canto III

Rock-bottom.

His mind was rock-bottom, within the very depths of Hell, and he had no way of ever retrieving it again.

Not that he minded.

On the contrary—it had always been what Vergil Sparda had wanted, to be resonant with the devil within him.

_And yet you are still so hesitant to allow me to control you, son of __Sparda_

The room about him was suffocating—dark, musty, chokingly thick with the stench of his own human essence, the palpable smell seeping from his pores and making his demonic side nauseous by its very existence. His mind was a flickering candle, receding and flying into memories intermingled with lapses of darkness, faces and distorted shapes fluttering past and fading away into nothingness.

_Your human blood is quite resistant to the intervention of our demonic soul. To attain true power, you must discard your mental ties with the human world. You know this, fool. You have struggled, have suffered for this._

Nelo Angelo.

The sneer resounding in his head was resonant, thrumming in Vergil's very bones; Nelo Angelo, the demonic half, having become a tangible substance in his visit to Hell…his disgust churned Vergil's stomach as if he himself were feeling such emotions, embracing such thoughts of disappointment and loathing towards every particle of his own being. The darkness swept about him through the dim room, thick and tense, its slippery skin struggling to latch onto Vergil's white body, struggling to wipe out his consciousness if only to grip and tear away his humanity with its long, thin tendrils.

Vergil _wanted_ it. His mind and body sang with the anticipation of it, his blood screamed for it, _why could __Nelo__ not see this?_

_I see what you cannot. I see into the depths of your soul, for I am a part of your soul. And you are more hesitant than ever._

"Lies," Vergil gasped in a hoarse whisper, clutching onto throbbing temples, squinting glazed eyes at the sudden onslaught of pain in his brain, the uncontrollable spasmic pain that had surfaced to torture him ever since he had been pulled from Hell by Arkham.

Ever since Nelo had split apart from him, had sought to devour him just as he had so wantonly wished, he had been suffering the most dreadful physical pain. It was as if his very body was fighting this possession like a deadly virus to his veins.

And Vergil did not possibly know _why_.

_It's the presence of the others._

The fire that licked and burned at his mind ebbed slightly, if only to allow him enough self-control to concentrate on those words that came from nowhere, yet echoed and penetrated with such strength throughout his being. It was an echo at the back of his mind, so forceful it seemed to devour and warp his thoughts into a porous hole of submission. The son of Sparda was powerless to this voice, this voice that so strikingly resembled his own, and yet, all at once, was _not_ his own, for it was fully bestial, fully demonic.

_The half-blood you once called your brother…and that girl. They are weakening your resolve with their mortality. You may not realize this, son of __Sparda__, yet it is so. Your power grew immensely within the tower, for you were surrounded by demonic entities; yet here you fight them, you stray from them, into the opened arms of the human wench and your dual-blooded kin. And the accursed woman shares your blood. What were you to expect?_

It had nothing to do with that. Fingers clenched temples, nearly prying out arctic-white hair as teeth grit together in the newest onslaught, as if a knife were being pressed straight through his skull, from forehead through. Punishment for his renegade thoughts.

_You must rid yourself of such influences, son of __Sparda__. You had been so close before, had the wench's father not interfered—_

And that is why she is being used, as a tool of vengeance! Never would he allow any of the sub-human girl's influence to corrode his own steel resolve, he could so easily run her through with Yamato, could sever her spine at will. He had nearly _killed_ her, had Nelo forgotten?

_Then kill her now, and end your humanity. Become the demon and rid yourself of the wench's father, garner strength through your murders. _

It wasn't nearly as easy as the entity thought. Vergil snarled in frustration as the sensation of his ribs compressing jarred his thoughts, his veins pounding over and collapsing with his frayed nerves— he found himself grabbing Yamato's sharp surface, clenching his fist about the blade with such force his white-knuckled hands drew rivulets of blood down the once-immaculate weapon. It diluted the pain in his mind, as if his brain were being torn apart, as if every fragment of thought were being forcefully shattered by the will of the spirit within, struggling to force an opening into his very essence.

Nelo did not understand the agenda. The being was truly a fool to have questioned the thoughts of the Devil, for his intentions were purely and simply to garner pure power, and nothing more. The girl was a _puppet, _a _pawn_ that he needed, admittedly almost desperately, to stay alive. The fact that she had chosen to fuse with his blood had been an easily predictable occurrence, and one that would make her all the more easily disposable in the end.

And Dante…amidst the overwhelming pain, his twisted, snarling mouth almost formed itself into a dry smile at the thought. Idiot brother, blood-traitor _fool_, to deny the power that was his right, to refuse the vengeance that was his duty. He would die of his own accord, and Vergil was no catalyst simply because he knew it was to come inevitably, as one would watch a rodent skittering across the road and _knows_ it would perish that very same day.

A flicker of a thought impaled itself through his mind with the force of a speeding bullet; Nelo's sneering disapproval ripping through his veins, force-feeding the image in violent, disjointed memory—

Lady's thin, trembling frame, hovering above his bedside, the demon watching her with half-amusement, half of something else, some emotion that had been so frighteningly alien to him…he had simply pushed it aside, stored it deep within the depths of his mind…and she had fallen, the gun clattering to the floor, her body against his own, and he had _held_ her, whispering, _only for you…_

Because in all her torn frailty, in all her human flaw, she appeared the very apparition of his mother, shaking and weak and yet so desperately strong.

_And that is why you keep her alive, is it? _

No. Of course not. Such emotions were strange and foreign to him, hence his denial, his pushing back of such a lecherous, blasphemous memory…a product of his human blood, the impulse, the sickening sympathy, and nothing more.

_Then hurt her. Kill her!_

When they carried out his plans like the rats they were, he would not hesitate to step on the girl, to crush her beneath his heel. Didn't he _know_ that? Teeth clenched and throbbed with the strength and forcefulness of his grip, Yamato cutting deeply into flesh, its silver face tainted red and odorous with his own mixed blood. Nelo's trust was faltering, and such a thing was slippery, unwanted; he could not drive the very demonic force within him which he wished to fully transform him into a full Devil, to open the gates of power unto his being.

_And so you must hurt her even more. You must __desensitize__ yourself completely. It is simple, for the influence of the human is as poison to the superior. To evolve, you must take your prey and destroy those who fetter you to weakness. _

Yes. He didn't have to kill her, not just yet; the puzzle was incomplete for now, and the pieces were essential. They would have to gut and abandon Devil May Cry first, of course, and even now she was weakening without his constant flow of blood…his traitor blood, his poison blood. She would die with too much of his blood, and die without enough.

The irony; it brought a dark smile to his lips, seemed to dull the pain reverberating throughout his body. Nelo certainly did not object when such hostile thoughts flitted throughout the son of Sparda's mind. Yet another sudden burst of pain was enough to alert Vergil to the sudden presence in the room.

It was a flitting light in the darkness. A blood-red fire, detached and yet seeming part of a greater whole as it traveled slowly and methodically throughout his line of vision, before it focused into a pair, and, just as he stared, he saw it _blink._ Then as sudden warmth stirred within Nelo's spirit, Vergil's own body tensed in recognition and his upper lip curled into a bestial snarl.

"What are _you_ doing here, you bastard?!"

The anger was strong enough to dilute the pain that filled him in Nelo's objection to his words; Vergil was standing upright, his aching, throbbing palms gripping the blood-caked Yamato by its handle, eyes narrowed, a ferocious growling never failing to rip through from the depths of his throat.

"I decided I would join your lovely little party, with all the little Devils gathering in this room. How quaint and charming!"

The mocking tone in that light, airy voice sent a deluge of monstrous hatred to flood Vergil's mind; he leapt forward and Yamato pierced the air before him just as the pair of eyes moved with rapid shifting through the thick air, easily dodging his assault. The Devil snarled in frustration, another blowing current of pain throughout his mind disorienting him for a half second before he pulled his blade up to shoulder-level and faced the leering eyes again with a threatening growl.

"Ah, and you _are_ so frightening when you are being held back by your demonic leash, oh son of Sparda! Your companion sees me as I am; not a _threat_, but a potential ally, wouldn't you agree?"

A gleam of incisors through the subliminal black; Vergil fought the urge to dive forward and struggle to impale the being who incurred such wrath from his body, his body which trembled and shook within every limb , consumed in stabbing, violent fire,

"You _killed_ them, Mundus, you killed them and I swear to you that I will destroy you in turn!"

A throaty chuckle, and the pain in Vergil's spine seemed to intensify; Nelo was trying to _keep _him from reacting, trying to reel him in as a leash to a dog. But _why?_

_Are you not allies? Is he not a wellspring of power, willing to be shared with your wanton entity? Are you two not both power-hungry, power-seeking?_

"And…oh, to think," The taunting voice continued, the bloody eyes watching, squinted in cool, malicious mirth, "to think that you are even pumping the human women with blood, just as I myself have…ah, you are following in the steps of a master, my dear Vergil, learning well as an apprentice to true dark power—"

"NO, damnit, no! _I will never be your ally _you murdering coward!_"_

Another blow of metal through the darkness, Yamato crashing through the thick black with its silver fangs; the red gaze hesitated, then, and the blade connected with flesh in a sickeningly loud tearing sound that pulsed throughout Vergil's body with wicked satisfaction. Slivers of blood as black as the abysmal darkness squirted from the collision of metal upon flesh, so dark the white devil could barely make them out; yet he _knew_ it, with every satisfying pulse of his bloodthirsty heart, he knew the satisfaction of Mundus's pain with the bestial viciousness of a monster biting into the flesh of elusive prey.

Yet just as the wound bloomed against Mundus's body, so did his mental link jerk backwards, as if on a chain, and pain filled Vergil's mind again, hard, unforgiving pain unlike anything he had so far experienced. Helplessly he shut his eyes and screamed out, willing Nelo away from interference, away from his opportunity at vengeance, yet Nelo merely intensified its hold, protesting his violence with this crude form of reasoning.

_Why do you resist it, son of __Sparda__? Such an opportunity is effortless, and such sacrifices can easily be made for the magnitude of your power…_

"We are one and the _same_, Vergil Sparda! Soon you will realize, and soon you shall be devoured by your need to destroy me!"

Red eyes stared as resolutely as they had been, the vicious leer filled with twisted greed. Mundus's thoughts resonated with that of Nelo Angelo; power, in any way possible. Even if they were to become allies, to destroy Arkham together.

And then, beyond the pain in his mind, a stray strand of a memory, pulled from nothingness, certainly nothing of Nelo's doing…

An immaculate white dress, clinging to an even whiter body, the pale blond figure falling into air, into suspended space, her body splattered in scarlet, splattered as if by an artist's hand, the gaping hole in her torso leading straight into the still heart…

"No," He said again, and for once, Vergil Sparda's voice was shaking with the intensity of it.

Yamato struck again; a patch of darkness seemed to ebb away, evaporate, recede into another spray of night-black blood, and a shriek undulated throughout the room, a wild, bestial cry that shook his mind and enclosed itself around his heart in a tender fist.

And he was a child again, floating through the blackness, fighting against it, fear penetrating his every pore, fear and confusion and guilt and horror and loathing, all merging violently into the empty blue eyes, blue eyes which had once been filled with so many tears, tears escaping yet inescapable as he hovered above that still, pale form, that body like dripping red wax, the still hands against the red chest, so red he _did_ think it had been wine at first, a mere stain, and that she would awaken, vibrant and healthy, and that there was no hole, there had never been a hole, it had merely been a nightmare, a dream, a fleeting dreadful thought amidst his panic…

_Weakling._

Laughter; Mundus's laughter, the shadowy laughter that now encompassed his mind, drove him from that fleeting image to cold reality, caused him to drive Yamato blindly forward with a piercing scream into the dark depths; and then, utter silence, as the scarlet gaze dissipated into nothing, and the pain in his mind suddenly receded—

And he was left alone, again, heaving deep breaths of the foul, dry air, alone with his traitorous mind, alone with his cold thoughts and opened wounds.

And Vergil Sparda saw again himself as he was; tiny, cocooned in gasps and wracking sobs, tracing the cold, unresponsive lips, touching the frail cold skin that crumbled beneath his fingers, willing the heavy-lidded eyes opened to find the blank white gaze of finality, clinging to that body as if it were his one hope, his one reason for existing within the world, taking both Dante and Sparda to pry his trembling body from the inert form, and even then, he had protested, had kicked and fought and bitten like a rabid animal, had gone nauseous with the smell of her, the blood and the perfume and the stench of a corpse, heard the wrenching, piercing screams of dread and mourning that filled his own ears, overwhelmed him, then, as he realized they had been his own…

And from then on, numbness.

Blackness.

Darkness.

That cold, sickening desire to destroy; the primal desire which had frightened him, once a decade ago. It was normalcy, now, enveloping him in substance, and as he gazed down at the deep slits in his palms, felt the still-eminent, breathing presence of Nelo within him, felt the darkness become silent of Mundus's presence, he found it impossible to ever escape.

He couldn't escape himself, after all.

Not when it was so terribly useful to destroy without remorse.

_And if power led to the inevitable…_

If it meant for him to twist the girl's throat in his fingers, to force the life out of her body and render her nothing more than a mere corpse when all was done and his vengeance was exacted…

_So be it._

He fell upon the chair once more, its wooden body groaning beneath him, as if the second presence within him were as tangible as a being in the flesh. His thoughts had shaken him, inexcusable weakness; slowly he allowed his cold, silent fury to envelop him, the encounter with Mundus only fueling his cold desires, only furthering to desensitize him, to intensify his animosity…

And just as that moment, as if it were a sickening twist of fate, the sound of footsteps preceded a violent, explosive slam against the wooden door, a ray of light from the hall bursting into bright incandescence. Vergil felt himself flinch involuntarily at the sudden onslaught upon his eyes, yet his gaze was glazed and resolutely lifeless as Nelo spoke to him, within him, through him.

"What the hell did you _do_ to me, you monster?!"

Multi-colored eyes gazed upon him with burning fury.

He barely had time to react when Lady pressed Ebony to his forehead, finger trembling on the trigger, and fired.


End file.
